" Here she hurled at him the most
offensive insult that a Russian can offer a man of that race.

She trembled and sobbed with rage, spat in fury, and stood up ready to
go, wrapped in her mantle like a great red flag. She was the statue of
hate and vengeance. She was horrible and terrible. She was beautiful.
At the final supreme insult, Gounsovski started and rose to his feet as
though he had received an actual blow in the face. He did not look at
Annouchka, but fixed his eyes on Prince Galitch. His finger pointed him
out:

"There is the man," he hissed, "who has told you all these fine things."

"Yes, it is I," said the Prince, tranquilly.

"Caracho!" barked Gounsovski, instantaneously regaining his coolness.

"Ah, yes, but you'll not touch him," clamored the spirited girl of the
Black Land; "you are not strong enough for that."

"I know that monsieur has many friends at court," agreed the chief of
the Secret Service with an ominous calm. "I 'don't wish ill to monsieur.
You speak, madame, of the way some of your friends have had to be
sacrificed. I hope that some day you will be better informed, and that
you will understand I saved all of them I could."

"Let us go," muttered Annouchka. "I shall spit in his face."

"Yes, all I could," replied the other, with his habitual gesture of
hanging on to his glasses. "And I shall continue to do so. I promise you
not to say anything more disagreeable to the prince than as regards his
little friend the Bohemian Katharina, whom he has treated so generously
just now, doubtless because Boris Mourazoff pays her too little for the
errands she runs each morning to the villa of Krestowsky Ostrow."

At these words the Prince and Annouchka both changed countenance. Their
anger rose. Annouchka turned her head as though to arrange the folds
of her cloak. Galitch contented himself with shrugging his shoulders
impatiently and murmuring:

"Still some other abomination that you are concocting, monsieur, and
that we don't know how to reply to."

After which he bowed to the supper-party, took Annouchka's arm and had
her move before him. Gounsovski bowed, almost bent in two. When he rose
he saw before him the three astounded and horrified figures of Thaddeus
Tchitchnikoff, Ivan Petrovitch and Athanase Georgevitch.

"Messieurs," he said to them, in a colorless voice which seemed not to
belong to him, "the time has come for us to part. I need not say that we
have supped as friends and th