e they would assist, rather than retard our efforts."

"Perhaps so."

"There can be no doubt of your own loyalty to our cause, princess?"

"Certainly not."

"Are the others like you? Pardon me, there can be no others like you
for there could never be another so beautiful and fascinating as you
are. But are there others of your acquaintance high in position, who
are working for the cause as diligently as you are?"

"They are many. Their name is legion."

They parted then. He to go about his several duties among the
nihilistic sympathizers who could not return to Russia without
including Siberia in their itinerary, and she to stride across the room
and stand for a long time facing herself in the mirror, studying the
features of her own beautiful face in an effort to detect there the
fascinating qualities before which all men with whom she came in
contact seemed so ready to succumb.

But her eyes were cold and hard as she regarded her own reflection in
the glass. There was a fire in their depths which could have attracted
no man, and which would have repelled all alike, for it was threatening
and sombre.

Zara de Echeveria almost hated herself at that moment. Hated the beauty
which gave her such power, and which exerted the magic that made slaves
of men.

The hour came when she entered a carriage again to be driven to the
steamship wharf; when she stood upon the deck near the rail, and gazed,
as she honestly believed, over the house tops of a city she would never
see again.

Fate, however, had builded differently for her, although she did not
guess it; and she was going now to meet it as fast as the throbbing
engines of the mechanical monster could bear her forward.

When the great bulk of the vessel swung into the current of the North
river, and she turned her eyes once more toward the wharf it had left,
a waving hand attracted her attention, and she recognized the tall form
of Alexis Saberevski as he bade her adieu. Beside him on the pier was
another figure, as tall and as straight as Saberevski's, and she saw
them turn away together and walk up the pier until they were lost in
the crowd.

She did not know, then, that the other tall figure of a man was the one
into whose arms she was fleeing, even though she left him there,
unknown, upon that North river wharf, while she sailed away to the
other side of the world.

And he could foresee as little.

But such is Fate.

CHAPTER IV

DAN DERRINGTON