war that the world
had ever seen, the Fates would once more decide in favour of the
strongest battalions, the fittest would triumph, and a new era of
military despotism would begin--perhaps neither much better nor much
worse than the one it would succeed.

If, on the other hand, the plans of the Terrorists were successfully
worked out to their logical conclusion, it would not be war only, but
utter destruction that Society would have to face. And then with
dissolution would come anarchy. The thrones of the world would be
overthrown, the fabric of Society would be dissolved, commerce would
come to an end, the structure that it had taken twenty centuries of
the discipline of war and the patient toil of peace to build up,
would crumble into ruins in a few short months, and then--well, after
that no man could tell what would befall the remains of the human
race that had survived the deluge. The means of destruction were at
hand, and they would be used without mercy, but for the rest no man
could speak.

When Nicholas Roburoff, the President of the Executive, rose in his
place at eight o'clock to explain the business in hand, every member
present saw at a glance, by the gravity of his demeanour, that the
communication that he had to make was of no ordinary nature, but even
they were not prepared for the catastrophe that he announced in the
first sentence that he uttered.

"Friends," he said, in a voice that was rendered deeply impressive by
the emotion that he vainly tried to conceal, "it is my mournful duty
to tell you that she whom any one of us would willingly shed our
blood to serve or save from the slightest evil, our beautiful and
beloved Angel of the Revolution, as we so fondly call her, Natasha,
the daughter of the Master, has, in the performance of her duty to
the Cause, fallen into the hands of Russia."

Save for a low, murmuring groan that ran round the table, the news
was received in silence. It was too terrible, too hideous in the
awful meaning that its few words conveyed, for any exclamations of
grief, or any outburst of anger, to express the emotions that it
raised.

Not one of those who heard it but had good reason to know what it
meant for a revolutionist to fall into the hands of Russia. For a man
it meant the last extremity of human misery that flesh and blood
could bear, but for a young and beautiful woman it was a fate that no
words could describe--a doom that could only be thought of in silence