d upright on his skates and described an easy little figure on
the outside edge backward.

"And have always found you on slippery ground."

"And never a fall," said De Chauxville over his shoulder, as he shot
away across the brilliantly lighted pond.

It was quite dark. A young moon was rising over the city, throwing out
in dark relief against the sky a hundred steeples and domes. The long,
thin spire of the Fortress Church--the tomb of the Romanoffs--shot up
into the heavens like a dagger. Near at hand, a thousand electric lights
and colored lanterns, cunningly swung on the branches of the pines, made
a veritable fairyland. The ceaseless song of the skates, on ice as hard
as iron, mingled with the strains of a band playing in a kiosk with open
windows. From the ice-hills came the swishing scream of the iron runners
down the terrific slope. The Russians are a people of great emotions.
There is a candor in their recognition of the needs of the senses which
does not obtain in our self-conscious nature. These strangely
constituted people of the North--a budding nation, a nation which shall
some day overrun the world--are easily intoxicated. And there is a
deliberation about their methods of seeking this enjoyment which appears
at times almost brutal. There is nothing more characteristic than the
ice-hill.

Imagine a slope as steep as a roof, paved with solid blocks of ice,
which are subsequently frozen together by flooding with water; imagine a
sledge with steel runners polished like a knife; imagine a thousand
lights on either side of this glittering path, and you have some idea of
an ice-hill. It is certainly the strongest form of excitement
imaginable--next, perhaps, to whale-fishing.

There is no question of breathing, once the sledge has been started by
the attendant. The sensation is somewhat suggestive of a fall from a
balloon, and yet one goes to the top again, as surely as the drunkard
will return to his bottle. Fox-hunting is child's play to it, and yet
grave men have prayed that they might die in pink.

Steinmetz was standing at the foot of the ice-hill when an arm was
slipped within his.

"Will you take me down?" asked Maggie Delafield.

He turned and smiled at her--fresh and blooming in her furs.

"No, my dear young lady. But thank you for suggesting it."

"Is it very dangerous?"

"Very. But I think you ought to try it. It is a revelation. It is an
epoch in your life. When I was a younger man I us