he house, gave her brisk
applause: hailing with delight this legitimate member of the troupe whom
it would certainly be worth while to ask out to supper.

Ivan, rarely enough attracted by women of her type, was in a dangerously
susceptible mood. And de Windt was hardly more displeased than surprised
at the invariable attendance of Ivan on those evenings when Mademoiselle
Petrovna was billed to appear. Ivan himself made no great effort to
analyze the appeal she made to him: an appeal to the baser side of his
nature. But, though he met the young woman more than once, it soon
became evident, even to his friend, that he had no intention of
attaching himself seriously to her following. What it was that held him
back, he did not know: the memory of two sad, gray eyes, a voice raised
for him in warning at the moment when it was about to die into eternal
silence; or the nearer vision of a slender, dark-crowned maid, clad in
whitest draperies;--who shall say? At any rate, Ivan was evidently
determined to keep this latter picture unrivalled in his heart, let
richly dangerous fascinations call to him as they might.

But the young singer herself, it would appear, cherished no such
protective vision. Her professional career in Petersburg was a brief
one. By mid-May, a fortnight before the opera season came to an end,
Mademoiselle Petrovna had left the company and was no longer available
for pleasant little suppers at the Bellevue or the Courteliain. The
matter of her going--and more especially its manner--formed a week's
subject of surmise at the three great clubs. But the retreat of the
charming debutante was not discovered. And if she had taken with her a
companion, the identity of that person was a matter rather of surmise
than of knowledge. For which reasons, probably, the gossip about the
affair gradually ceased, though the subject that replaced it was common
enough, neither spiced nor salted, but found, by more people than one,
to be as indigestible as it was unsavory.

To be plain, June was at hand; and every officer in that capital of
officers, was preparing for his ten weeks of annual drill and roasting
in the camp at Krasnoe-Selo.

In considering the peculiarity of the army regulations in Russia, it
becomes necessary, first of all, to take brief survey of that greatest
and most dread factor of all the life in that Empire, neglected though
it has been by every commentator and critic of civilized nations: a
factor which