MICH. (_holding up his hand_). A moment! I have something to say. (_Approaches VERA; speaks very slowly._) Vera Sabouroff, have you forgotten your brother? (_Pauses to see effect; VERA starts._) Have you forgotten that young face, pale with famine; those young limbs twisted with torture; the iron chains they made him walk in? What week of liberty did they give him? What pity did they show him for a day? (_VERA falls in a chair._) Oh! you could talk glibly enough then of vengeance, glibly enough of liberty. When you said you would come to Moscow, your old father caught you by the knees and begged you not to leave him childless and alone.[26] I seem to hear his cries still ringing in my ears, but you were as deaf to him as the rocks on the roadside; as chill and cold as the snow on the hill. You left your father that night, and three weeks after he died of a broken heart. You wrote to me to follow you here. I did so; first because I loved you; but you soon cured me of that; whatever gentle feeling, whatever pity, whatever humanity, was in my heart you withered up and destroyed, as the canker worm eats the corn, and the plague kills the child. You bade me cast out love from my breast as a vile thing, you turned my hand to iron, and my heart to stone; you told me to live for freedom and for revenge. I have done so; but you, what have you done? VERA. Let the lots be drawn! (_CONSPIRATORS applaud._) PRINCE PAUL (_aside_). Ah, the Grand Duke will come to the throne sooner than he expected. He is sure to make a good king under my guidance. He is so cruel to animals, and never keeps his word. MICH. Now you are yourself at last, Vera. VERA (_standing motionless in the middle_). The lots, I say, the lots! I am no woman now. My blood seems turned to gall; my heart is as cold as steel is; my hand shall be more deadly. From the desert and the tomb the voice of my prisoned brother cries aloud, and bids me strike one blow for liberty. The lots, I say, the lots! PRES. Are you ready. Michael, you have the right to draw first; you are a Regicide. VERA. O God, into my hands! Into my hands! (_They draw the lots from a bowl surmounted by a skull._) PRES. Open your lots. VERA (_opening her lot_). The lot is mine! see the bloody sign upon it! Dmitri, my brother, you shall have your revenge now. PRES. Vera Sabouroff, you are chosen to be a regicide. God has been good to you. The dagger or the poison? (_Offers her dagger and vial._) VERA. I can trust my hand better with the dagger; it never fails. (_Take dagger._) I shall stab him to the heart, as he has stabbed me. Traitor, to leave us for a ribbon, a gaud, a bauble, to lie to me every day he came here, to forget us in an hour. [27]Michael was right, he loved me not, nor the people either.[27] Methinks that if I was a mother and bore a man-child I would poison my breast to him, lest he might grow to a traitor or to a king. (_PRINCE PAUL whispers to the PRESIDENT._)