took it, trembled,
and more than once she glanced furtively toward the door.

"Yes, I have come," she murmured. "I do not know why. It is not right
for me to come; yet there are times when I am weary--times when Paul
seems fierce, and when I am terrified. Sometimes I even wish that I were
back----"

"Your husband seems very highly strung," Bernadine remarked. "He has
doubtless led an exciting life."

"As to that," she replied, gazing around her now, and gradually becoming
more at her ease, "I know but little. He was a student professor at
Moschaume when I met him. I think that he was at one of the universities
in St. Petersburg."

Bernadine glanced at her covertly. It came to him as an inspiration that
the woman did not know the truth.

"You are from Russia, then, after all," he said, smiling. "I felt sure
of it."

"Yes," she admitted reluctantly. "Paul is so queer in these things. He
will not have me talk of it. He prefers that we are taken for French
people. Indeed," she went on, "it is not I who desire to think too much
of Russia. It is not a year since my father was killed in the riots, and
two of my brothers were sent to Siberia."

Bernadine was deeply interested.

"They were amongst the revolutionaries?"

She nodded.

"Yes," she answered.

"And your husband?"

"He, too, was with them in sympathy. Secretly, too, I believe that he
worked amongst them; only he had to be careful. You see, his position at
the college made it difficult."

Bernadine looked into the woman's eyes, and he knew then that she was
speaking the truth. This man was indeed a great master; he had kept her
in ignorance.

"Always," Bernadine said, a few minutes later, as he passed her tea, "I
read with the deepest interest of the people's movement in Russia. Tell
me what became eventually of their great leader--the wonderful Father
Paul."

She set down her cup untasted, and her blue eyes flashed with a fire
which turned them almost to the colour of steel.

"Wonderful, indeed!" she exclaimed. "Wonderful Judas! It was he who
wrecked the cause. It was he who sold the lives and liberty of all of us
for gold."

"I heard a rumour of that," Bernadine remarked, "but I never believed
it."

"It was true," she declared passionately.

"And where is he now?" Bernadine asked.

"Dead!" she answered fiercely. "Torn to pieces, we believe, one night in
a house near Moscow. May it be so!"

She was silent for a moment, as though engaged i