d closed the doors behind
him. Then the sentry brought up the rear and extinguished the lights
as he left the passage.

Fifteen minutes later there sat down to supper, in the solidly
comfortable dining-room of the upper house, a party of ladies and
gentlemen who chatted through the meal as merrily and innocently as
though there were no such things as tyranny or suffering in the
world, and whom not the most acute observer would have taken for the
most dangerous and desperately earnest body of conspirators that ever
plotted the destruction, not of an empire, but of a civilisation and
a social order that it had taken twenty centuries to build up.

CHAPTER VII.

THE DAUGHTER OF NATAS.

Supper was over about eleven, and then the party adjourned to the
drawing-room, where for an hour or so Arnold sat and listened to such
music and singing as he had never heard in his life before. The songs
seemed to be in every language in Europe, and he did not understand
anything like half of them, so far, at least, as the words were
concerned.

They were, however, so far removed from the average drawing-room
medley of twaddle and rattle that the music interpreted the words
into its own universal language, and made them almost superfluous.

For the most part they were sad and passionate, and once or twice,
especially when Radna Michaelis was singing, Arnold saw tears well up
into the eyes of the women, and the brows of the men contract and
their hands clench with sudden passion at the recollection of some
terrible scene or story that was recalled by the song.

At last, close on midnight, the President rose from his seat and
asked Natasha to sing the "Hymn of Freedom." She acknowledged the
request with an inclination of her head, and then as Radna sat down
to the piano, and she took her place beside it, all the rest rose to
their feet like worshippers in a church.

The prelude was rather longer than usual, and as Radna played it
Arnold heard running through it, as it were, echoes of all the
patriotic songs of Europe from "Scots Wha Hae" and "The Shan van
Voght" to the forbidden Polish National Hymn and the Swiss Republican
song, which is known in England as "God Save the Queen." The prelude
ended with a few bars of the "Marseillaise," and then Natasha began.

It was a marvellous performance. As the air changed from nation to
nation the singer changed the language, and at the end of each verse
the others took up the strain