ere blacker than ever, as if the fury
of the flames within him were providing these dancing figures with a
brighter background.

"These shadows are not the pictures of my thoughts," he said to himself.
"Neither are they chained souls seeking to escape. They are the smoke
from the fire in my head. They are the black smoke from my brain which
is slowly burning away!"

He sat for hours, staring at the wall. The figures came and went, but
they ceased to have any form or meaning. He merely sat and drank, and
stared.... All at once a strange shadow appeared. A shadow? No; a
phantom--a dreadful thing! Suvaroff leaned forward. His breath came
quickly, his body trembled in the grip of a convulsion, his hands were
clenched. He rose in his seat, and suddenly--quite suddenly, without
warning--he began to laugh.... The shadow halted in its flight across
the wall. Suvaroff circled the room with his gaze. In the center of the
wine-shop stood Flavio Minetti. Suvaroff sat down. He was still shaking
with laughter.

Presently Suvaroff was conscious that Minetti had disappeared. The fire
in his brain had ceased to burn. Instead his senses seemed chilled, not
disagreeably, but with a certain pleasant numbness. He glanced about.
What was he doing in such a strange, squalid place? And the brandy was
abominable! He called the waiter, paid him what was owing, and left at
once.

There was no mist in the air to-night. The sky was clear and a wisp of
moon crept on its disdainful way through the heavens.

"I shall sleep to-night," muttered Suvaroff, as he climbed up to his
room upon the third story of the Hotel des Alpes Maritimes.

He undressed deliberately. All his former frenzy was gone. Shortly after
he had crawled into bed he heard a step on the landing. Then, as usual,
sounds began to drift down the passageway, not in heavy and clattering
fashion, but with a pattering quality like a bird upon a roof. And,
curiously, Suvaroff's thoughts wandered to other things, and a picture
of his native country flashed over him--Little Russia in the languid
embrace of summer--green and blue and golden. The soft notes of the
balalaika at twilight came to him, and the dim shapes of dancing
peasants, whirling like aspen-leaves in a fresh breeze. He remembered
the noonday laughter of skylarks; the pear-trees bending patiently
beneath their harvest; the placid river winding its willow-hedged way,
cutting the plain like a thin silver knife.

A fresh curr