ht everything was safe. Finally night arrived. At nine
the lights in the Mansion were put out--all but in one window. I knew
how hearts were beating there: mine was echoing.

--"I am going, Syva," Pashinsky whispered. "I can't wait any
longer--all is burning inside of me."

He put his rifle behind the rain-pipe, straightened his belt, and
started towards the entrance door.

The door of the Mansion squeaked and swallowed him, and before I heard
him walking up the stairs I followed him.

All was dark inside, only a feeble light from the court penetrated
through the windows. We passed the corridor, then a large room, then
a small room. Here Pashinsky stopped--and I heard his heavy breathing.
Then he threw open the door.

I saw mattresses on the floor and in a far corner pale, trembling
figures, glued together by fear.

Pashinsky hesitated for a moment--to pick out the one he wanted--and
then with an outcry, suddenly rushed to this mass of helpless
panic-stricken bodies, and a struggle between a delirious man, feebled
by desire, and these ladies, began.

I jumped on him from behind; preoccupied, he did not feel when I put
the rope around his neck so that the collar wouldn't be in my way,
tightened my weapon in a deadlock and dragged him away--almost before
his carnal touch contaminated the Princesses--into the next room, and
shut the doors.

He was making some efforts to free himself, hitting my knees with his
heels, and growling from rage; then he bit me in the hand. But in a
minute I was already firmly sitting on his back, with my knees on his
awkwardly turned arms, twisting the rope with all of the strength I
had.

"Please, don't kill him," I heard a sobbing whispering voice say, and
other voices, too, repeated the "don't kill."

This Kerensky idea made me quite angry and I said as calmly as I could
under the circumstances:

"With all of my reverence for your order, your Highnesses, I refuse to
obey. Please shut the doors and don't wake up the others,--I have my
own accounts to settle." And when the doors closed, I kept tightening
and tightening the rope until his head turned and his tongue,--rough
and dry,--came way out and was touching my hands, and his face became
hot and wet. He made a few convulsive movements--and became still.

When his head fell with a dull sound on the floor, I took him out
under cover of the night, and threw his body into the well. I walked
out onto Tuliatskaya Street and chatted