ne sarcasm. "I had
not looked to you for such consideration."

Boris laughed, showing his fine teeth, and gave Paul a quizzical look.

"Don't you think," he began softly, "that you had better turn back and
retrace your steps to-morrow?"

Paul looked at him scornfully.

"Do you think I have set out on this errand to be turned back by you?"
he said to Boris.

"I suppose," Paul cried, with a certain tone of irony in his voice,
"that you think I am a mere society butterfly. What do you think I
care for all the scented drawing-rooms in the world, for polo, for
Hurlingham, for a stuffy reception in some great house in town?
Nothing--nothing! Give me the open prairie land, the tall, brown
grass, the open sky, the joy of the weary body that has ridden hard
all the day!"

He laughed shortly.

"Do you think," he continued to the astonished Boris, "that there is
any soft, silk-bound pillow in Mayfair that could appeal to me when I
could sleep under the stars?

"Heavens!" He reached out his arms and brought them to his sides again
with a strenuous motion, all his muscles contracted. "I have learnt,"
he cried, "the lesson that life is not only real and earnest, but that
life is hard, that life is a battle--a battle to be won!"

His eyes fell upon his strong, sinewy, brown hands, and he clenched
his fists.

"I am not going back to England. I am going on--to win that girl of
the picture--from you!"

Boris regarded him pleasantly.

"It seems," he said, "that you are not in a very good humour this
evening."

"My humour suits me very well," answered Paul. He rose and walked over
to the door, and held it open.

"For the present," he said, "you may go, but if I were you I would be
careful how I indulged in any villainy."

Boris laughed lightly as he paused in the doorway.

"I am still thinking of Mademoiselle Vseslavitch," he said.

"Then you make a vast mistake," Paul answered. "She is not for you."

"We shall see what we shall see," tauntingly replied Boris, as he
closed the door behind him.

But his remarks did not prevent Paul, when he retired, from promptly
going to sleep.

CHAPTER XXI

During the night Paul was awakened--for a moment he thought he heard
the sound of some struggle in the hall outside his door, and the sound
of excited whispers. Then a woman's voice, in low, forceful tones,
penetrated the stillness, and Paul heard distinctly:

"Come away, for God's sake!"

Then all was still.