the chief answered shortly.

"But that is ridiculous. We're American citizens."

No reply.

"Can we leave for Odessa to-night?"

No reply.

Marie stopped her questions.

"What money have you? Come here while I count it," one of the spies said
to me. He slipped me one hundred roubles on the sly, before turning the
rest over to the chief. I held it openly in my hand, too dazed to know
what to do with it, till he whispered to me to hide it. "You may want
it, later," he said.

"Frau Pierce will go with us," the chief said, closing his portfolio;
and I understood that the _revision_ was finished. "Frau G---- can stay
here under room-arrest, with her little boy."

He spoke to no one in particular, but addressed the room at large, his
face impassive, and his voice without an intonation. The spies stood in
the midst of the tumbled clothes, watching us silently, ominously.
Janchu now crept up into Marie's lap again. As a matter of course, I
went into the other room and changed into my traveling suit.

"May I take my toilet things?" I asked the chief.

"Ja."

"You'd better make a bundle of bedclothes," the spy who had given me the
money whispered to me.

I rolled up two blankets and a pillow with his help.

"I'm ready," I said. "May I send a few telegrams?"

"Certainly, certainly." The chief's manner suddenly became extremely
courteous.

I wrote one to our Ambassador in Petrograd, one to Mr. Vopicka in
Bucharest, one to the State Department in Washington, and one to Peter.
I wrote Peter that I was delayed a few days. I was afraid that he might
come on and be arrested, too. My hand did not tremble, though it struck
me as very queer to see the words traced out on the paper--almost
magical. My imagination was racing, and I could see myself already being
driven into one of those baggage cars bound for Tomsk.

"Keep your mind away from what is going to happen," I said to myself.
"You will have time enough to think in prison. Things are as they are.
You are going to walk out of this room, just the way you've done a
hundred times. Are you different now from what you've always been? Keep
your mind on things you know are real."

I tried to move accurately, as though a false move would disturb the
balance of things so that I would walk out of the room on my hands like
an acrobat.

Suddenly, the chief, who had been talking in a corner with the other man
in uniform, wheeled about.

"Frau Pierce may stay here under r