to get through, via Warsaw and Alexandrovo, if you go at once."

"Why do you ask me that?" I demanded, looking at him very straight. His
blue eyes were more troubled than I had ever seen them. "Do you doubt
me?"

"No, before God I trust you as I trust none other in the world but
Mishka and his father! But you are a stranger, a foreigner; why should
you throw your life away for us?"

"I have told you why, before. Because I only value my life so far as it
may be of service to--her. If I left her and you, now, as you suggest,
smuggled myself back into safety,--man, it's not to be thought of!"

"Well, I will urge you no more," he said sadly. "But you are sacrificing
yourself for a chivalrous delusion, my friend."

"Where's the delusion? I know she does not love me; and I am quite
content."

Long after, I knew what he had wished to tell me then, and I can't even
now decide what I'd have done if he had spoken, whether I would have
gone or stayed; but I think I'd have stayed!

When I had bathed and dressed in Vassilitzi's dressing-room,--he was
still in bed and asleep in the adjoining one,--a servant took me to
Anne's boudoir, a small bare room that yet had a cosey homelike look
about it.

She was alone, sitting in a low chair, her hands lying listlessly on the
lap of her black gown. Her face was even whiter and more weary than it
had looked in the morning, and she had been weeping, I saw, for her long
lashes were still wet; but she summoned up a smile for me,--that brave
smile, that was, in a way, sadder and more moving than tears.

"You have heard that my mother is dead?" she asked, in a low voice. "She
died in my arms half an hour after we got in; and I am so glad,--so
glad. I have been thanking God in my heart ever since. She never knew
me; she knew none of us, but Yossof; and that only because he had been
near her in that dreadful place. You saw her--just for a moment; you saw
something of what those long years had made of her,--and we--my God, we
had thought her dead all that time!"

She shuddered, and sat staring with stern, sombre eyes at the fire, her
slender fingers convulsively interlaced.

She was silent for a space, and so was I, for I could find never a word
to say.

Suddenly she looked straight at me.

"Maurice Wynn, if ever the time comes when you might blame me, condemn
me,--justifiably enough,--think of my mother's history. Remember that I
was brought up with one fixed purpose in life,--to ave