efit and guidance."

"I bear you a message," said the well-preserved woman of whom a thousand
tongues had gossiped evilly in Petrograd. "To-morrow the Empress expects
you informally. She will take no refusal."

"Refusal--how can I refuse my Empress?" he replied. "I can beg of her to
excuse me. I have to attend a meeting in the lowest quarter of the city
to-morrow among those who await me. And in the evening I go upon a
pilgrimage. Her Majesty will not begrudge the poor my ministrations.
Please tell her this. My sphere, as designed by God, is with the masses
and not in the Imperial Palace."

That was all I overheard. Stuermer called me aside to whisper, and as he
did so I saw that the Starets had at once become surrounded by women, of
whom he always became the centre of attraction, with hands crossed so
humbly over his breast.

His refusal to go to Court was in accordance with his extraordinary
intuition and acumen, though his meeting with the woman Vyrubova marked
another milestone in the history of Russia's betrayal.

The days passed. The world was, of course, in ignorance, but we in the
Poltavskaya, the monk and myself, knew of the despatch of Admiral
Rozhdestvensky's blundering fleet on its voyage half-way round the world,
how he was ordered to fire upon anything he saw in the North Sea, and
how, as soon came out, he fired upon some of your British trawlers on
the Dogger Bank, for which our Government paid quite willingly sixty-five
thousand pounds in compensation.

But let the first war-chapter of Russia's history pass. With it Rasputin
had but little to do. The person who, unwilling or not, carried out the
will of Potsdam's Kaiser was the Empress Alexandra. And having done so
she, with her curious nature, suddenly turned from gay to grave. She
became strange in her conduct and discarded her wonderful Paris gowns--in
which, by the way, she was eclipsed by "Liane," the dark-haired diva of
the Paris _cafes chantants_, in whom Nicholas II. took such a very
paternal interest.

Time after time I had been present when Stuermer and Rasputin, chuckling
over the undoubted success of their conspiracy, discussed the situation.

Since Her Majesty had met the rascal monk at Tsarskoe-Selo she had never
appeared in public. On certain occasions, when a Court pageant or
function had to be held according to custom and the calendar, it was the
Emperor's mother who, with her well-known charm and honesty, received the
guests. E