“For me!  Ha!” His voice carried unutterable scorn.

She cowered back to the floor.

“My children I can slay, but I will leave them in no house of lust.”

“Oh!” she cried, clasping her hands upon her breast and swaying backwards and forwards upon her knees, “I will be a good woman.  I will sin no more.  Rosenblatt I shall send—­”

“Rosenblatt!” cried the man with a fierce laugh.  “After two days Rosenblatt will not be here.”

“You will—?” gasped the woman.

“He will die,” said the man quietly.

“Oh, my lord!  Let me kill him!  It would be easy for me at night when he sleeps.  But you they will take and hang.  In this country no one escapes.  Oh!  Do not you kill him.  Let me.”

Breathlessly she pleaded, holding him by the feet.  He spurned her with contempt.

“Peace, fool!  He is for none other than me.  It is an old score.  Ah, yes,” he continued between his teeth, “it is an old score.  It will be sweet to feel him slowly die with my fingers in his throat.”

“But they will take you,” cried the woman.

“Bah!  They could not hold me in Siberia, and think you they can in this land?  But the children,” he mused.  “Rosenblatt away.”  With a sudden resolve he turned to the woman.  “Woman,” he said, in a voice stern and low, “could you—­”

She threw herself once more at his feet in a passion of entreaty.  “Oh, my lord!  Let me live for them, for them—­and—­for you!”

“For me?” he said coldly.  “No.  You have dishonoured my name.  You are wife of mine no longer.  Do you hear this?”

“Yes, yes,” she panted, “I hear.  I know.  I ask nothing for myself.  But the children, your children.  I would live for them, would die for them!”

He turned from her and gazed through the window, pondering.  That she would be faithful to the children he well knew.  That she would gladly die for him, he was equally certain.  With Rosenblatt removed, the house would be rid of the cause of her fall and her shame.  There was no one else in this strange land to whom he could trust his children.  Should death or exile take him in his work—­and these were always his companions—­his children would be quite alone.  Once more he turned and looked down upon the kneeling woman.  He had no love for her.  He had never loved her.  Simply as a matter of convenience he had married her, that she might care for the children of his dead wife whom he had loved with undying and passionate love.

“Paulina,” he said solemnly, but the contempt was gone from his voice, “you are henceforth no wife of mine; but my children I give into your care.”

Hitherto, during the whole interview, she had shed no tear, but at these words of his she flung her arms about his knees and burst into a passion of weeping.

“Oh, my lord!  My dear lord!  Oh, my lord! my lord!” she sobbed, wildly kissing his very boots.