to her. Did she
take heart a little? A great wave of sadness bowed her down, but
courage, too, began to revive in her.

"Have faith?" She looked up at the sky; she would do as he asked--unto
the grave, if need be. Then, very quietly, she dressed and went
down-stairs.

EPILOGUE

It is very gay at the Hermitage, in Moscow, just after Easter, and so it
was natural that Sonia Turgeinov should have been there on a certain
bright afternoon some three years later. The theater, at which she once
more appeared, was closed for the afternoon, and at this season
following Holy Week and fasting, fashionables and others were wont to
congregate in the spacious cafe and grounds, where a superb orchestra
discourses classical or dashing selections. The musicians played now an
American air.

"Some one at a table out there on the balcony sent a request by the head
waiter for it," said a member of Sonia Turgeinov's party--a Parisian
artist, not long in Moscow.

"An American, no doubt," she answered absently, sipping her wine. The
three years had treated her kindly; the few outward changes could be
superficially enumerated: A little more embonpoint; a tendency toward a
slight drooping at the corners of the mobile lips, and moments when the
shadows seemed to stay rather longer in the deep eyes.

"That style of music should appeal to you, Madam," observed the
Frenchman. "You who have been among those favored artists to visit the
land of the free. Did you have to play in a tent, and were you literally
showered with gold?"

"Both," she laughed. "It is a land of many surprises."

"I have heard _es ist alles_ 'the almighty dollar'," said a musician
from Berlin, one of the gay company.

"Exaggeration, _mein Herr_!" she retorted, with a wave of the hand. "It
is also a _komischer romantischer_ land." For a moment she seemed
thinking.

"Isn't that his excellency, Prince Boris Strogareff?" inquired abruptly
a young man with a beyond-the-Volga physiognomy.

She started. "The prince?" An odd look came into her eyes. "Do you
believe in telepathic waves, Monsieur?" she said gaily to the Frenchman.

"Not to any great extent, Madam. _Mais pourquoi?"_

"Nothing. But I don't see this prince you speak of."

"He has disappeared now," replied her countryman, a fellow-player
recently come from Odessa. "It is his first dip again into the gaieties
of the world. For several years," with the proud accents of one able to
impart information co