room was emptied of
them all. They tramped out, laughing and joking, children again, the
hall door closed behind them.

Nina clutched Vera's arm.

"Vera.... Vera, where is he?"

"I don't know," said Vera.

"What's all this?" asked Nicholas.

They explained to him but he scarcely seemed to hear. He was
radiant--smiling in a kind of ecstasy.

"They have gone? I am safe?"

In the doorway was the little policeman, black with grime and dust, so
comical a figure that in reaction from the crisis of ten minutes before,
they laughed hysterically.

"Oh look! look!..." cried Nina. "How dirty he is!"

"Where have you been?" asked Vera. "Why weren't you in the cupboard?"

The little man's teeth were chattering, so that he could scarcely
speak....

"I heard them in the other room. I knew that the cupboard would be the
first place. I slipped into the kitchen and hid in the fireplace."

"You're not angry, Nicholas?" Vera asked. "We couldn't send him out to
be shot."

"What does that matter?" he almost impatiently brushed it aside. "There
are other things more important." He looked at the trembling dirty
figure. "Only you'd better go back and hide again until it's dark. They
might come back...."

He caught Vera by the arm. His eyes were flames. He drew her with him
back into her little room. He closed the door.

"The Revolution has come--it has really come," he cried.

"Yes," she answered, "it has come into this very house. The world has
changed."

"The Czar has abdicated.... The old world has gone, the old wicked
world! Russia is born again!"

His eyes were the eyes of a fanatic.

Her eyes, too, were alight. She gazed past him.

"I know--I know," she whispered as though to herself.

"Russia--Russia," he went on coming closer and closer, "Russia and you.
We will build a new world. We will forget our old troubles. Oh, Vera, my
darling, my darling, we're going to be happy now! I love you so. And now
I can hope again. All our love will be clean in this new world. We're
going to be happy at last!"

But she did not hear him. She saw into space. A great exultation ran
through her body. All lost for love! At last she was awakened, at last
she lived, at last, at last, she knew what love was.

"I love him! I love him... him," her soul whispered. "And nothing now
in this world or the next can separate us."

"Vera--Vera," Nicholas cried, "we are together at last--as we have never
been. And now we'll work together a