eam vanished from his eyes, and he stood frowning in
perplexed thought, resting one of his fine, muscular white hands on the
back of a tawdry gilt chair.

"Strange," he muttered beneath his mustache. "She said nothing. By what
name did you know her--other than those pseudonyms you have mentioned?"

"Miss Anne Pendennis."

"Ah!"

I thought his face cleared.

"And what is this danger that threatens her?"

"I think you may know that better than I do," I retorted, with a glance
at the flower--the red symbol--that made a vivid blot of color like a
splash of blood on the white table-cloth.

"That is true; although you appear to know so much. Therefore, why have
you spoken of her at all?"

Again I got that queer feeling in my throat.

"Because you love her!" I said bluntly. "And I love her, too. I want you
to know that; though I am no more to her than--than the man who waits on
her at dinner, or who opens a cab door for her and gets a smile and a
coin for his service!"

It was a childish outburst, perhaps, but it moved Loris Solovieff to a
queer response.

"I understand," he said softly in French.

He spoke English admirably, but in emotional moments he lapsed into the
language that is more familiar than their mother-tongue to all Russians
of his rank.

"It is so with us all. She loves Russia,--our poor Russia, agonizing in
the throes of a new birth; while we--we love her, the woman. She will
play with us, use us, fool us, even betray us, if by so doing she can
serve her country; and we--accept the situation--are content to serve
her, to die for her. Is that not so, Monsieur?"

"That is so," I said, marvelling at the way in which he had epitomized
my own ideas, which, it seemed, were his also. Yet Von Eckhardt had
asserted that she--Anne Pendennis--loved this man; and it was difficult
to think of any woman resisting him.

"Then we are comrades?" he cried, extending his hand, which I gripped
cordially. "Though we were half inclined to be jealous of each other,
eh? But that is useless! One might as well be jealous of the sea. And we
can both serve her, if she will permit so much. For the present she is
in a place of comparative safety. I shall not tell you where it is, but
at least it is many leagues from Russia; and she has promised to remain
there,--but who knows? If the whim seizes her, or if she imagines her
presence is needed here, she will return."

"Yes, I guess she will," I conceded. (How well he und