sir, for this is
a matter which concerns your life."

"So far as I am concerned, sir," Godfrey said, "I am absolutely ignorant
of having done any harm in the matter, and have not the most remote idea
why I have been arrested. I may have behaved foolishly in allowing
myself to take part in what I thought was a masquerade joke, but beyond
that I have nothing to blame myself for. I went to the Opera-house,
never having seen a masked ball before. I was alone, and being young and
evidently a stranger, I was spoken to and joked by several masked
ladies. Presently one of them came up to me. I had no idea who she was;
she was closely masked, and I could see nothing of her face." He then
repeated the request that had been made him.

"Do you expect me to believe this ridiculous nonsense about this Captain
Presnovich and his colonel?"

"I can only say, sir, what I am telling you is precisely what happened,
and that I absolutely believed it. It seemed to me a natural thing that
a young officer might come to a ball to see a lady who perhaps he had no
other opportunity of meeting alone. I see now that I was very foolish to
allow myself to be mixed up in the affair; but I thought that it was a
harmless joke, and so I did as this woman asked me."

"Go on, sir," the general said in a tone of suppressed rage.

"There is little more to tell, sir. I went up with this woman to the box
she had pointed out, and there found this Captain Presnovich as I
believed him to be. I put on his hat, mask, and cloak, walked down the
stairs, and was leaving the Opera-house when I was arrested, and am even
now wholly ignorant of having committed any offence."

"A likely story," the general said sarcastically. "And this woman, did
you see her face?"

"No, sir, she was closely masked. I could not even see if she were young
or old; and she spoke in the same disguised, squeaking sort of voice
that all the others that had spoken to me used."

"And that is your entire story, sir; you have nothing to add to it?"

"Nothing whatever, sir. I have told you the simple truth."

The general threw himself back in his chair, too exasperated to speak
farther, but made a sign to the officer standing next to him to take up
the interrogation. The questions were now formal. "Your name is Godfrey
Bullen?" he asked.

"It is."

"Your nationality?"

"British."

"Your domicile?"

Godfrey gave the address.

"How long have you been in Russia?"

"Four months."