must be good-looking and possessed of either wealth or
influence, but in preference wealth. And it was certain that no woman was
ever invited unless it was Rasputin's intention to admit her to the
secrets of his "religion."

Yet here was open defiance! This lady, whose name was Madame Anastasia
Svetchine, was the wife of Colonel Svetchine, who was on the Staff of the
Etat-Major at Vilna, and who was already at the battle front. Before
Rasputin had allowed her to be brought to his house it had fallen to my
lot to make some inquiries concerning her, and I had found that she was
of good family, that her husband was possessed of fair means, and that
besides their house in Vilna they had a comfortable residence in the
Kirotshnaya, in Petrograd. She moved in that rather gay, go-ahead set of
which, prior to the war, the reckless Madame Soukhomlinoff was the
centre, and she had recently become quite a notable figure in Petrograd
society.

Rasputin, furious at her interruption, roared:

"Silence, woman! Go out of the room at once!"

But Madame Svetchine, springing to her feet, cried: "It is monstrous!
Disgraceful! Blasphemous! It is true what Purichkevitch has said in the
Duma--that you are the evil force in Russia! Though a woman, I will have
none of your mock piety and disgraceful licentiousness!"

"Ah! I see, madame, that you are an enemy--eh?" he said in a slow,
deliberate way. "And let me tell you, when Gregory Rasputin has an enemy,
he does not rest until that enemy is swept from his path. If you defy me,
you defy your God!"

"I defy you!" cried the woman shrilly, making a dramatic scene. "But I
fear my God, and Him alone."

"Oh! be silent, I beg!" cried Countess Lazareff in French, wringing her
hands, she having introduced her, while all were horrified that the holy
Father should be thus openly denounced before his "sisters."

"What is that woman saying?" the monk shouted across to me, for he did
not know French, and was suspicious that the words contained yet another
insult until I translated them to him.

"I refuse to be silent!" declared the colonel's young wife. "I will
describe to all whom I meet what has taken place here to-day--the mockery
of it all. It is shameful how any woman in her senses, refined and
educated, should fall beneath the fascination of such a brute!"

This was greeted with wild exclamations of surprise and indignation.
Indeed, so furious became the "sisters" at such open insult that I