Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 326: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

318 HER ROYAL LOVER, blood flowed. At the same time Najeska Ivanowna, profiting by my weakness, violently pushed me toward the door, opened it, and threw me out. Then, as I heard her violently push the bolts, the two hands of a man who suddenly sprang before me in the total obscurity of the passage seized me. Dismayed, not rendering an account of that which I was doing nor with whom I had to deal, so great was my nervous excitement, with superhuman strength, in order to prevent him from crying, I grasped the man by the throat. With my hands, become two pincers, I squeezed it, I squeezed it with all my strength! Nota sigh, not a rattle could proceed from his mouth. But, even in the obscurity, I saw the glistening of two round terrified, fright- ened eyes, which were projecting more and more from their sockets aS my pressure was sinking deeper and deeper. I have never felt a sensation so bestial. His body stirred, writhed under the heat of mine. Then, suddenly, nothing more—nothing! he stirred no more. I had a terrible moment of terror, there in that gloomy passage, alone with that corpse. It was impossible for me to leave it before the princess’ door. The only luminous point was the ight from the window at the end of the corridor. It was necessary to drag the body there and to hastily throw it not, in order that they might be- lieve it an accident or a suicide; but despite the over-excitement which increased my strength ten- fold, my arms almost broke under the burden of that body. “By dint of superhuman efforts, I succeeded, however, in arriving at the window. My head and my heart were in such an effervescence that the in- stinct of the beast alone guided me. Suddenly, I + : m Gomicbooks. co