ntment passed over Sophia's face. She made a
pettish gesture.

"Does not--friendship do away with all sense of obligation?" she
complained.

"Not with me," I answered firmly. "No, Sophia, if you really care for
me--for my friendship--you must let me do what I have sworn to do
ever since I first saw you and heard some rumors of your tragic
story."

"You mean?"

"You must let me break your odious bondage. I can deliver you, if you
will only trust me, from the power of the Russian police, or any
other power, and set you free to live the life of fascination and
happiness which ought to be yours."

The Princess seemed plunged in meditation. At length she looked
up----

"You would undertake a hopeless task, my dear Andreas. Not even you
can fathom all the ramifications of the intrigues in which I find
myself an indispensable puppet. Those who control my movements will
never let go the strings by which they hold me, and least of all,
just now."

I was distressed to see that the Princess was disposed to evade my
appeal for confidence. I answered with a slightly wounded air:

"I may know more than you think, more even than you know yourself on
certain points. But of course you are not willing to confide in me
fully----"

"There can be no perfect trust without perfect"--The Princess, who
spoke this sentence in Russian, concluded it with a word which may
mean either friendship or love according to circumstances. As she
pronounced it, it seemed like love.

"There can be no perfect love without perfect trust," I responded
quickly, striving to assume the manner of an exacting lover.

And then, a happy thought striking me, I added in an aggrieved voice,

"Do you think it is nothing to me that you should be associated with
other men in the most secret enterprises, holding private conferences
with them, receiving them in your house, perhaps visiting them in
theirs; that you should appear to be on intimate terms with the
Grand Duke Staniolanus, with M. Petrovitch, with a man like this M.
Auguste----"

At the sound of this last name, to which I had artfully led up,
Sophia sprang into a sitting posture and gave me a look of anger and
fear.

"Who told you anything about M. Auguste?" she demanded in hoarse
tones. "What has he to do with me?"

"Nay, it is not you who ought to ask me that," I returned. "You may
be a believer in his conjuring tricks, for aught I know. He may be
more to you than a comrade, or even a prophe