e cheated him he will make his report, and then you will have, not
one, but several spies to reckon with; that is, if they think it worth
while. Still you have done well,--very well. Now you must wait until you
hear from my master." Mishka never mentioned a name if he could avoid
doing so.

"But can't you give me some idea as to where she is likely to be?" I
demanded. To wait, and continue to act my part, as if there was no such
person as Anne Pendennis in the world and in deadly peril was just about
the toughest duty imaginable.

"I can tell you nothing, and you, by yourself, can do nothing," he
retorted stolidly. "If you are wise you will go about your business as
if nothing had happened. But be in your rooms by--nine o'clock to-night.
It is unlikely that we can send you any word before then."

Nine o'clock! And it was now barely noon! Nine mortal hours; and within
their space what might not happen? But there was no help for it. Mishka
had spoken the truth; by myself I could do nothing.

It was hard--hard to be bound like this, with invisible fetters; and to
know all the time that the girl I loved was so near and yet so far,
needing my aid, while I was powerless to help her,--I, who would so
gladly lay down my life for her.

Who was she? What was she? How was her fate linked with that of this
great grim land,--a land "agonizing in the throes of a new birth?" If
she had but trusted me in the days when we had been together, could I
have saved her then? Have spared her the agony my heart told me she was
suffering now?

Yes,--yes, I said bitterly to myself. I could have saved her, if she had
trusted me; for then she would have loved me; would have been content to
share my life. A roving life it would have been, of course, for we were
both nomads by choice as well as by chance, and the nomadic habit, once
formed, is seldom broken. But how happy we should have been! Our
wanderings would never have brought us to Russia, though. Heavens, how
I hated--how I still hate it; the greatest and grandest country in the
world, viewed under the aspect of sheer land; a territory to which even
our own United States of America counts second for extent, for
fertility, for natural wealth in wood and oil and minerals. A country
that God made a paradise, or at least a vast storehouse for the supply
of human necessities and luxuries; but a country of which man has made
such a hell, that, in comparison with it, Dante's "Inferno" reads lik