,--about himself or any one else."

Ruth stared at her. "Unless I am greatly mistaken, Madame Obosky, I have
known Mr. Percival as long if not longer than you have."

"You do not know him at all," rejoined the Russian brusquely. "Be still,
please! I must hear what he is saying to them now." A little later she
turned to the American girl and laid her hand on her arm. "For-give me,
if I was rude to you. I am so very much older than you that I--how old
are you, Miss Clinton?"

"I am twenty-five," replied the other, surprised into replying.

"And I am twenty-six," said Madame Obosky, as if she were at least twice
the age of her companion. "See! They are dispersing. It's all over.
Come! Let us go back to the other side."

"I am not ready to go back to the other side," protested the American
girl, resisting the hand on her arm. "Why should we go back, now that
the danger is over?"

"Because we must not let him catch us here," urged Olga in some
agitation.

"And why not, pray?"

The Russian looked at her in astonishment. "But surely you heard him
tell us to go back to the other side. You heard him call us idiots, Miss
Clinton?"

And Ruth Clinton suffered herself to be hurried incontinently around the
corner of the deck building.

"Once, in Moscow, I saw a Grand Duke confront a mob of students who had
gathered in the street near his house. They were armed and they had
come to destroy this man himself. There were hundreds of them. He walked
straight toward them, his head erect, his shoulders squared, and
when they stopped he spoke to them as if they were dogs. When he had
finished, he turned his back upon them and walked away. They might have
filled him with bullets,--but they did not fire a shot. At the corner
he entered his carriage and disappeared. And then what did he do? He
fainted, that Grand Duke, he did. Fainted like a stupid, silly young
girl. But while he was standing before zat---that mob of terrorists he
was the strongest man in Russia. Nevertheless, he was afraid of them.
You have therefore the curious spectacle to perceive, Miss Clinton, of
one man being afraid of hundreds, and of hundreds of men at the same
time being afraid of one. Man, he is a queer animal, eh?"

It was not long before the doubts and fears of all on board the Doraine
gave way to a strange, unnatural state of exhilaration. It represented
joy without happiness, relief without security, exultation without
conviction,--for, after all,