t a success.

Sonya Valesky did her best to explain the situation to Nona. But how was
she to know how much or how little an American girl understands of life
and conditions in Russia? Was Nona aware that there were many girls and
young men, oftentimes members of noble families, who believed in a new
and different Russia?

Had Nona ever read of a great writer named Tolstoi, who wrote and
preached of the real brotherhood of man? He insisted that the words of
Christ should be interpreted literally and desired that Russia, and
indeed the world, should have no rich and poor, no Czar and slave, but
that all men and all women were to be truly equal. Nona's mother had
been a follower of Tolstoi's principles; therefore, her people had sent
her away from her own country because they feared if she continued to
live in Russia with these ideas she might be condemned to Siberia. So
Anna Orlaff had gladly left her own country, believing that in the
United States she would find the spirit of true equality.

Naturally her marriage had been a disappointment. At this point in Sonya
Valesky's letter, Nona Davis began to have a faint appreciation of the
situation. She remembered the narrow, conservative life of the old south
and that her father had lived largely upon traditions of wealth and
family, teaching her little else. What did it matter to him that there
were no titles in America, no more slaves to do his bidding, when he
continued to believe in the domination of one class over another.

Dimly at first, more vividly afterwards, Nona Davis could see the
picture of the young Russian girl, a socialist and dreamer, married into
such an environment. How disappointed and unhappy she must have been in
the conservative old city of Charleston, South Carolina! No wonder
people had never mentioned her name to her daughter, and that her father
had been so silent! A Russian socialist was little less than a criminal.

Nona was seated in a hard wooden chair in a small, cell-like room many
thousands of miles away from her own old home. Certainly something
stronger than her own wish must have drawn her to Russia, for here she
must learn to understand the story of her mother's life and to find her
own place in it.

At this point in the narrative Nona let her letter fall idly in her lap.
The girl's hands were clasped tightly together, for now her imagination
could tell her more than any words of another's.

Her father had been devoted to her, b