e girl like steel to a magnet. They seemed to
plead, to wrestle with him.

"_Will you help me--life or death--tonight? Kaya._"

Did her lips move; was it a signal? Her hands seemed to beckon him.
He bowed low to the loggia, like one in a trance, once, twice, their
eyes still together. And then, suddenly, he wrenched himself away
remembering the House, the shouting, cheering, waving House.

"Ah--h Velasco--o!"

Lifting his violin he began to play again slowly, dreamily, hardly
knowing how or why, a weird, chanting Polish improvisation like a love
song, a song without words. His eyes opened and closed again. Always
that gaze, pleading, wrestling, that flower-like face, those clasped
hands beckoning.

Who was she--Kaya? His heart beat and throbbed; he was suffocating.
With a last wild and passionate note Velasco tore the bow from the
strings; it was as though the earth had opened and swallowed him up; he
was gone.

[1] My God.

[2] A thousand devils!

CHAPTER II

In one of the poorer quarters of St. Petersburg there is a street on a
back canal, and over the street an arch. To the right of the arch is a
flight of steps, ancient and worm-eaten, difficult of climbing by day
by reason of a hole here, a worn place there, and the perilous tilting
of the boards; at night well nigh impassable without a lantern. The
steps wind and end in a tenement, once a palace, spanning the water.

It was midnight.

A cloud had come over the moon, light and fleecy at first, but
gradually growing blacker and spreading until finally it hung like a
huge drop-curtain screening the stars.

The street lay in darkness. From a window in the top of the arch a
single light was visible, pale and flickering as the ray from a candle;
otherwise the grey bulk of the building seemed lost in the shadows,
lifeless and silent.

Suddenly the light went out.

"Hist--st!" As if at a signal something moved on the staircase,
creeping forward, and then from the shadow of the tenement, from under
the archway, emerged other shadows, moving slowly like wraiths,
hesitating, stopping, losing themselves in the general blackness, and
then stirring again; shadows within shadows creeping.

Presently a door at the top of the steps opened and shut. Every time
it opened, a shadow passed through and another crept forward. No word
was spoken, no sound; not a step creaked, not a board stirred. It was
a procession of ghosts.

Behind the do