ntone and Monaco;
only, away down yonder the sunshine laps round all, absorbs all, while
beneath this lowering cloudy sky suffering is more apparent, though the
flowers seem fresher.

"Enter," said Sonia, pushing open the railed iron door of a white marble
facade on which were Russian words in gilded letters.

At first Tartarin did not understand where he was. A little garden was
before him with gravelled paths very carefully kept, and quantities of
climbing roses hanging among the green of the trees, and bearing great
clusters of white and yellow blooms, which filled the narrow space
with their fragrance and glow. Among these garlands, this lovely
efflorescence, a few stones were standing or lying with dates and names;
the newest of which bore the words, carved on its surface:

"Boris Wassilief.
22 years."

He had been there a few days, dying almost as soon as they arrived at
Montreux; and in this cemetery of foreigners the exile had found a sort
of country among other Russians and Poles and Swedes, buried beneath the
roses, consumptives of cold climates sent to this Northern Nice, because
the Southern sun would be for them too violent, the transition too
abrupt.

They stood for a moment motionless and mute before the whiteness of that
new stone lying on the blackness of the fresh-turned earth; the young
girl, with her head bent down, inhaling the breath of the roses, and
calming, as she stood, her reddened eyes.

"Poor little girl!" said Tartarin with emotion, taking in his strong
rough hands the tips of Sonia's fingers. "And you? what will you do
now?"

She looked him full in the face with dry and shining eyes in which the
tears no longer trembled.

"I? I leave within an hour."

"You are going?.."

"Bolibine is already in St. Petersburg... Manilof is waiting for me
to cross the frontier... I return to the work. We shall be heard from."
Then, in a low voice, she added with a half-smile, planting her blue
glance full into that of Tartarin, which avoided it: "He who loves me
follows me."

Ah! _vai_, follow her! The little fanatic frightened him. Besides, this
funereal scene had cooled his love. Still, he ought not to appear to
back down like a scoundrel. So, with his hand on his heart and the
gesture of an Abencerrage, the hero began: "You know me, Sonia..."

She did not need to hear more.

"Gabbler!" she said, shrugging her shoulders. And she walked away, erect
and pr