ked the other questions.

"You ask me what I intend to do, Vaninka? What do you wish me to do?
What can I do, but flee from St. Petersburg, and seek death in the first
corner of Russia where war may break out, in order not to repay my
patron's kindness by some infamous baseness?"

"You are a fool," said Vaninka, with a mixed smile of triumph and
contempt; for from that moment she felt her superiority over Foedor, and
saw that she would rule him like a queen for the rest of her life.

"Then order me--am I not your slave?" cried the young soldier.

"You must stay here," said Vaninka.

"Stay here?"

"Yes; only women and children will thus confess themselves beaten at the
first blow: a man, if he be worthy of the name, fights."

"Fight!--against whom?--against your father? Never!"

"Who suggested that you should contend against my father? It is against
events that you must strive; for the generality of men do not govern
events, but are carried away by them. Appear to my father as though you
were fighting against your love, and he will think that you have mastered
yourself. As I am supposed to be ignorant of your proposal, I shall not
be suspected. I will demand two years' more freedom, and I shall obtain
them. Who knows what may happen in the course of two years? The emperor
may die, my betrothed may die, my father--may God protect him!--my father
himself may die--!"

"But if they force you to marry?"

"Force me!" interrupted Vaninka, and a deep flush rose to her cheek and
immediately disappeared again. "And who will force me to do anything?
Father? He loves me too well. The emperor? He has enough worries in
his own family, without introducing them into another's. Besides, there
is always a last resource when every other expedient fails: the Neva only
flows a few paces from here, and its waters are deep."

Foedor uttered a cry, for in the young girl's knit brows and tightly
compressed lips there was so much resolution that he understood that they
might break this child but that they would not bend her. But Foedor's
heart was too much in harmony with the plan Vaninka had proposed; his
objections once removed, he did not seek fresh ones. Besides, had he had
the courage to do so; Vaninka's promise to make up in secret to him for
the dissimulation she was obliged to practise in public would have
conquered his last scruples.

Vaninka, whose determined character had been accentuated by her
education, h