he dress of a
Petersburg student. They were talking low and earnestly. Again that
word reached him, again the full sense of its meaning eluded his grasp.

Suddenly the comprehension of the scene became clear to him. He saw
they were mother and son, that he was relating some incident to her with
a suppressed enthusiasm that yet made itself audible in his deep,
thrilling tone, and visible in the glow and sparkle of his eye.

"She is an angel," he said at last. "We do well to trust her--but what
a risk, think of it, mother--five hundred lives, and only a few hours to
decide their fate."

The woman's face grew white, her feeble limbs shivered as with an ague
fit. "My son," she moaned, "my only one--and you, too, may be
sacrificed. Oh, unhappy country, unhappy fate that makes it ours! But
you are right. The Princess is an angel of goodness; she will save us.
She has said it."

They both turned involuntarily towards a small image, before which a
lamp burned. He saw them kneel hand in hand before it; then the room
faded into darkness--he was in another place now.

A sense of luxury, of perfume, of dreamy warmth, and then he saw,
opening before him in a vista of exquisite colour, a suite of softly
lighted chambers. They seemed to glow like jewels, each perfect in the
richness and loveliness of its setting, and at the farthest end of one
of them a woman reclined on a couch of white furs. She was wrapped in a
loose gown of thick white silk, bordered also with snowy fur, and her
lovely hair was unbound, and fell in a long trail of dusky splendour
over the colourless purity of her surroundings.

Her eyes were wide open, and full of a fear that was almost horror, and,
as if to account for it, he seemed suddenly to hear, coming through the
fragrant stillness of those virginal chambers, the dull heavy step of a
man. She raised herself on one lovely bare arm, her hand went to her
heart, then slowly her eyes were upraised as if in some dumb prayer for
strength. A strange frozen calm came over the perfect features. The
face looked as if carved in marble.

Nearer and nearer came the heavy step, reeling and uncertain now, yet
stumbling with drunken obstinacy towards some goal to which the leaden
senses pointed their brutal desires.

Up to this time, Julian Estcourt had only been conscious of a passive
blind submission to the force controlling him; but now power seemed to
thrill him, desire seemed struggling to life,