his courage with all his
might, and stepped boldly ashore, and entered the grounds, the kavass
following him with bent head and dejected looks.

His excellency the Russian ambassador was seated in his private study,
alternately sipping a cup of tea and puffing at a cigarette. The green
blinds were closed, and the air of the luxurious little apartment was
cool and refreshing. The diplomatist had very little to do, as no
business could be transacted until after the Bairam feast, which begins
with the new moon succeeding the month Ramazan; he sat late over his
tea, smoking and turning over a few letters, while he enjoyed the gentle
breeze which found its way into his room with the softened light. He was
a gray-headed man, but not old. His keen gray eyes seemed exceedingly
alive to every sight presented to them, and the lines on his face were
the expression of thought and power rather than of age. He was tall,
thin, and soldier-like, extremely courteous in manner and speech, but
grave and not inclined to mirth; he belonged to that class of active men
in whom the constant exercise of vitality and intelligence appears to
prolong life instead of exhausting its force, who possess a constitution
in which the body is governed by the mind, and who, being generally
little capable of enjoying the pleasure of the moment, find it easy to
devote their energies to the attainment of an object in the future.
Count Ananoff was the ideal diplomatist: cautious, far-sighted,
impenetrable, and exact, outwardly ceremonious and dignified, not too
skeptical of other men's qualities nor too confident of his own. His
convictions might be summed up, according to the old Russian joke, in
the one word Nabuchadnezar,--_Na Bogh ad ne Czar_,--"There is no God but
the Czar."

As Paul entered the ambassador's study, he was glad that he had always
been on good terms with his chief. Indeed, there was much sympathy
between them, and it might well have been predicted at that time that
Paul would some day become just such a man as he under whom he now
served. Convinced as he was that in his present career quite as much of
success depended upon the manner of carrying out a scheme as on the
scheme itself, Paul had long come to the conclusion that no manner could
possibly be so effective as that of Count Ananoff, and that in order to
cultivate it the utmost attention must be bestowed upon the study of his
chief's motives. Himself grave and cautious, he possessed