e.

Zara saw and correctly interpreted the glance, for as he left the room
upon my assurance that I would follow him at once she put her hands in
mine and said:

"Are you indeed assured of your own safety, Dubravnik? Ah, yes, I shall
always call you by that name. Are you assured of your own safety? Tell
me truly."

"Perfectly; and of yours, also. Have no fears."

Then I raised her hands to my lips, and kissed them both, first one and
then the other, again and again; and she, standing on tiptoe, pressed
her lips to my forehead.

"Love, honor, and obey," I murmured; and she repeated after me:

"Love, honor, and obey."

Then I left her.

It was still early in the day, but at that time of the year darkness
settles over the earth while yet the day is young, and night was
already abroad in the streets. I had much to do ere the dawn of another
day, for the time had come when the power of the Fraternity of Silence
must be asserted; when I felt that the work that I had agreed to do for
the czar was nearly completed. My drag net was ready, and the time had
come to cast it.

CHAPTER XIX

PRINCE MICHAEL'S ANGER

Nobody but myself in all Russia was familiar with the secrets and the
mysteries of the Fraternity of Silence. In organizing it, I had
anticipated just such a moment as the one that faced me now; that is,
an emergency where I would have to depend entirely upon the loyalty of
my men, and my own superior knowledge of who and what they were, for my
safety.

The partial description already given of that organization conveys only
a faint idea of its perfection and completeness. The different
departments were thoroughly under the control of their several heads,
and those heads were all men whom I could implicitly trust, and I knew
that I might even dare to snap my fingers at the power of the police
system itself, so great was my own. I had men everywhere; and my gift
of remembering names and faces, a gift the Almighty had bestowed upon
me, gave me the advantage of knowing nearly all of them by sight,
although there was not a score, all told, who knew me; and those were
every one importations of my own, upon whose devotion I could
thoroughly depend, even in the face of regular police opposition. More
than that, I had men within the ranks of the police, even within the
fold of the mysterious and dreaded Third Section.

I realized fully the danger to my own person in going upon the street
at that hour, when