streets shall be avoided. We are pretty well informed--Prince
Dalgoursky, who was a captain in the Preopojensky Guard, sells
newspapers outside the Soviet headquarters, and the comrades give him
tips. One of these days the comrades will shoot him, but for the moment
he is in favour, and makes as much as a hundred roubles a day."

The waitress came to the table, and the conversation momentarily ceased.
When she had gone Malcolm put the question which he had asked so often
in the past four years.

"Can you give me any news of the Grand Duke Yaroslav?"

The other shook his head.

"His Highness was in Petrograd when I heard of him last."

"And--and his daughter? She has been with the Russian Red Cross on the
Riga front, I know."

The bearded man shot a queer glance at his companion.

"In what circumstances did you see her last?" he asked.

Malcolm hesitated.

He could hardly tell a stranger of that tragic scene which was enacted
in his bedroom. From the moment she had fled through the door he had not
set eyes upon her. In the morning when he had wakened, feeling sick and
ill, he had been told that the Grand Duke and his daughter had left by
the early northern express for the capital. Of Boolba, that hideously
blinded figure, he heard nothing. When he inquired for Israel Kensky,
men shrugged and said that he had "disappeared." His house was closed
and the old man might be in prison or in hiding. Later he was to learn
that Kensky had reappeared in Moscow, apparently without hindrance from
the authorities. As for Boolba, he had kept his counsel.

"You seem embarrassed," smiled Malinkoff. "I will tell you why I ask.
You know that her Grand Ducal Highness was banished from Court for
disobedience to the royal will?"

Malcolm shook his head.

"I know nothing--absolutely nothing. Kieff and Odessa are full of
refugees and rumours, but one is as much a suspect as the other."

"She would not marry--that is all. I forget the name of the exalted
personage who was chosen for her, though I once helped to carry him up
to bed--he drank heavily even in those days. God rest him! He died like
a man. They hung him in a sack in Peter and Paul, and he insulted the
Soviets to the last!"

"So--so she is not married?"

The general was silent, beckoning the waitress.

"My little dear," he said, "what shall I pay you?"

She gave him the scores and they settled.

"Which way now?" asked the general.

"I hardly know--what must a s