there... How still the streets are, and the snow--how fast it
falls. How they crowd round the palace gate to-night. Stay the horses,
Ivan, I will speak... Do not fear, my friends, your lives are safe. I
promise it... What is this? My rooms? How lonely they seem to-night.
`Alone?' Yes, I am always alone. No lover's step has ever echoed
through this cloistered silence. Alone and sad. Ah! how I have
suffered here... What do they say? It will be over soon, it will be
over--soon. One more battle to win. Let me summon all my courage now.
I have faced ordeals before. I have forgotten woman's fears, and laid
aside woman's scruples. Am I not pure? Am I not brave? Yet why do I
tremble? One weakness is still unconquered, one human love burns true
and deep and steadfast in my heart. I cannot cast it out. I _will_
not; not even at your bidding; not even to make my task easier.

"A step in the silence... Who dares to cross my chambers? Courage, my
heart. There on the threshold stand my White Guard. Why should I fear?
Courage! courage--"

Like one carved in stone Julian Estcourt sat and listened. The dumb
misery of a terrible expectance held every faculty in its iron grasp.
Was his dread to be realised? It seemed so, for all control was gone; a
higher power had seized the reins. She had escaped him, and an awful
horror was upon him lest he, in his folly and shortsightedness, had
assembled these people here only to be witnesses of the degradation of
the peerless creature he had so worshipped and so loved.

Spell-bound they sat and listened. The rose-light from the lamps
falling upon their white, set faces, and the quivering tension of their
silent lips.

The voice of the sleeper went ruthlessly on.

Scene for scene, word for word, Julian Estcourt lived over again through
the wild dread and horror of his Dream. Scene for scene, word for word,
those wondering startled listeners saw it reproduced, though to them it
was scarce intelligible.

At last, she reached the point where his endurance had snapped beneath
the strain of terror, but now his every force was numbed--his will
seemed paralysed. One feeble helpless effort he made to lock those lips
into silence, to chain back the self-betrayal of that unconscious
speech. But love had made him weak, and passion had stifled the acute,
unerring faculties that once had bent her to his will.

He was powerless. He could only sit there dumbly--stupidly--l