"Listen, child: my sole object in coming was to steal you away from Alexander Sergievitch for a time." "Ah! If you want to steal either, take both of us. Alexander would not mind being run off with by you." "Only, as it happens, he is neither invited, nor may he come. You must accept your godmother's invitation." "What! The invitation to her ball!" "There you will meet the Czar and Czarina; they will speak to you." "I--there--without Alexander?" "Upon you it depends that Pushkin may be free to go where you go. Your marriage with him has entirely marred his career. He does not feel it now, but in the course of a year or two he will remember that formerly every step he took was accompanied by the clank of spurs. The soul of a man is not to be confined in a cage like a tame bird, especially when he has eagle's wings. Be it your task to implore forgiveness from the Czar for your husband, that Pushkin may proceed on his interrupted career. Now the meadows are still green; in another month they will be covered with snow, and the couple condemned to fireside and indoor life will not be so light-hearted as the one flying their kites in the open meadow." "Then it is your wish that I should intercede for Alexander's return to St. Petersburg?" "Not for all the world! No; a thousand times rather entreat the Czar to give him a mission that shall take you and him to your own people and country. Describe to the Czar and Czarina the land in which you were born, as it lives in your memory, with its genial climate, its aromatic woods, its fruit-bearing trees. Tell them all the lovely and beautiful things of it that your memory can recall, and entreat the Czar, as an act of mercy to yourself, to send your husband there." "Oh, the tempting thought!" sighed Bethsaba. "But he will never consent that I should leave him and go away, and stay days and weeks away from him." "It would only be one week." "But that is a century! Oh no! Alexander would never consent to it." "You leave that to me; I will talk him over." "Oh, if you succeed in that you will be a real fairy. But what an odd fairy! Had you wanted to carry off Alexander from me, I could have understood it; but me from Alexander--that I cannot understand." "See! here he comes through the garden. Place yourself here at the window and watch. I will go and meet him. You listen how I am going to bewitch him!" "That I am curious to hear." One intrenchment was already taken. Zeneida hastened to besiege the second. Pushkin, crossing the lawn, was astonished to see Zeneida hurrying towards him. "Turn back, and let's have a little talk," said she, putting her hand on Pushkin's arm. "Are you quite happy?" "One can never be too happy." "My object in coming is to ask you to spare me a portion of your happiness. I want to run away with your wife for a week." "My little wife! What to do with her? Already she loves you ever so much better than she does me."