t even speak of the war nor his own
part in it. Yet Nona guessed from her own observation and from certain
unconscious information that he was one of the favorite younger officers
of the Russian general in command of the Grovno fortifications.

So a number of weeks passed, until now and then Nona Davis almost forgot
the war and her original reasons for being in her present strange
position. No one brought her papers; Barbara's and Mildred's letters
contained little war news. The truth was possibly being concealed from
them, or else there was no way of their discovering it.

So Nona was at least spared the anxiety of knowing that the victorious
German hosts were drawing nearer and nearer the fortress of Grovno. Like
stone houses built by children the other ancient Russian forts had
fallen before his "Excellenz von Beseler," the victor of Antwerp, who
was known as the German battering ram.

Even when Sonya opened her eyes, after weeks of an almost fatal illness,
and asked for news of the war, Nona was unable to tell her.

Then as the days of Sonya's convalescence went by she would not let her
talk of it. Always war is a more terrible thing to girls and women than
it is to boys and men. But ever since their first acquaintance Nona had
realized that the horror of it went deeper into Sonya's consciousness
than any person she had yet seen. It must be the war that had aged her
so in the past year.

So the Russian woman and the American girl spoke of everything else.
Sonya told of her own life and of Nona's mother when they were little
girls. They had both been allowed to go away to college. It was in
school that they imbibed their revolutionary ideas. No wonder that their
families never forgave them!

Sonya was dressed and sitting in her chair the day when the summons
finally came for her arrest.

It was Nona Davis in her nurse's Red Cross costume who opened the door
for the two men in uniform. They were not dressed like soldiers, and as
she could not understand what they said, she did not dream of their
errand.

But Sonya's peasant servants must have understood, for at the sight of
the strangers they dropped on their knees and held out imploring hands.

Sonya herself finally made things clear. The men were two police
officers who had been sent to bring her to Petrograd. She had been in
hiding here near Grovno for several months and had hoped to escape their
vigilance. Evidently Sonya had been arrested by the Russian