familiar streets, had seen familiar buildings.
Alone--something within her did not need the outside world. Not lonely
therefor. And a strange kindling happiness in her soul--a sense of
triumph over her former Nihilistic self.

SHE saw no friends--the ones of former days--Nihilists. They were
perhaps hiding in foreign lands--or were in the darker seclusion of some
Siberian Prison. But there rose no longing for these friends, no wish at
all for them.

NO longer was she Dasha Ivanovna Tortsov the Nihilist--the free
thinker--

PEACE had come to her--she wanted Peace for others--

NO longer a desire to see those in power killed--only the dark forests
and running waters, the wild flowers in the woods.

JOY filled her--Forgotten lay the haunting fear of other days--the gloom
cast by Prison walls--which had seemed ever to draw in upon her.

TO live--to let live--to send up Hymns of joy.

* * * * *

It was on the steps of Saint Isaac's Cathedral.

DARED she advance--dared she go in to the splendor of the Altars--to
pray--

AND ever the Fifth Symphony like a guiding spirit seemed to whisper at
her ear--

TRIUMPHANT over Defeat

LIGHT out of gloom--

DASHA filled her days with joy. The joy of being alive, of being freed
from herself--

SHE saw the sky and heard the laughter of children in the street--

SOMEHOW--in New York--when she had belonged to the orchestra she had
never noticed the sky. A few months more and the snow would come--

A WINTER in Russia--

THE early summer months passed quickly--until that first terrible day of
August, 1914, when all the horrors of the world were set loose and the
monsters from the under-world of men's minds were stalking unashamed.

IF Dasha had put aside her Nihilistic feelings--she laid them still
farther from her now.

A PURPOSE to serve her Russia lifted itself high and strong before her
soul.

SHE smiled as she thought of death.

III

SNOW and cold--suffering--starvation--in the forests the birds were
dead--

LITTLE children were dead--

THE stream of fugitives increased as the days
passed--Starvation--death--

TRIUMPHANT over Defeat still rang in Dasha's ears--Some day it would
come--

TRIUMPH--

SHE clothed a child here--

COMFORTED a mother there--

AND still they came--over the snow and corpses--through the
woods--fugitives everywhere--

DASHA worked--worked with all her heart--fed--clothed--

OUT into the