Lanovitch was as the willow, swayed by
every wind, in the neighborhood of the oak, crooked and still and
strong.

"In Petersburg you pledged yourself to help me," said De Chauxville. And
although she knew that in the letter this was false, she did not
contradict him. "I came here to claim fulfilment of your promise."

The hard blue eyes beneath the fur cap stared straight in front of them.
Catrina seemed to be driving like one asleep, for she noted nothing by
the roadside. So far as eye could reach over the snow-clad plain,
through the silent pines, these two were alone in a white, dead world of
their own. Catrina never drove with bells. There was no sound beyond the
high-pitched drone of the steel runners over the powdery snow. They were
alone; unseen, unheard save of that Ear that listens in the waste places
of the world.

"What do you want me to do?" she asked.

"Oh, not very much!" answered De Chauxville--a cautious man, who knew a
woman's humor. Catrina driving a pair of ponies in the clear, sharp air
of Central Russia, and Catrina playing the piano in the enervating,
flower-scented atmosphere of a drawing-room, were two different women.
De Chauxville was not the man to mistake the one for the other.

"Not very much, mademoiselle," he answered. "I should like Mme. la
Comtesse to invite the whole Osterno party to dine, and sleep, perhaps,
if one may suggest it."

Catrina wanted this too. She wanted to torture herself with the sight of
Etta, beautiful, self-confident, carelessly cognizant of Paul's love.
She wanted to see Paul look at his wife with the open admiration which
she had set down as something else than love--something immeasurably
beneath love as Catrina understood that passion. Her soul, brooding
under a weight of misery, was ready to welcome any change, should it
only mean a greater misery.

"I can manage that," she said, "if they will come. It was a prearranged
matter that there should be a bear-hunt in our forests."

"That will do," answered De Chauxville reflectively; "in a few days,
perhaps, if it suits the countess."

Catrina made no reply. After a pause she spoke again, in her strange,
jerky way.

"What will you gain by it?" she asked.

De Chauxville shrugged his shoulders.

"Who knows?" he answered. "There are many things I want to know; many
questions which can be answered only by one's own observation. I want to
see them together. Are they happy?"

Catrina's face hardened.

"