uches, set the apartment in order. A moment later
he lounged out at the great doorway, dangling the tradesman's box on his
arm.

It was a fine moonlight night, and the gardens were peopled by shadows
moving hither and thither beneath the trees. The shadows were mostly in
couples. Others had come on the same errand as Kosmaroff--for a better
motive, perhaps, or a worse. It was the very end of St. Martin's brief
summer, and when winter lays its quiet mantle on these northern plains
lovers must needs seek their opportunities in-doors.

Kosmaroff arrived first, and sat down thoughtfully on a bench. He was
one of the few who were not muffled in great-coats and wraps against the
autumn chill. He had known a greater cold than Poland ever felt.

"I suppose she will come," he said in his mind, watching the gate
through which Netty must enter the gardens. "It matters little if she
does not. For I do not know what I shall say when she does come. Must
leave that to the inspiration of the moment--and the moonlight. She is
pretty enough to make it easy."

In a few moments Netty passed through the gate and came towards
him--not hurriedly or furtively, as some maiden in a book to her first
clandestine meeting--but with her head thrown back, and with an air of
having business to transact, which was infinitely safer and less likely
to attract the attention of the idle. It was she who spoke first.

"I am going back at once," she said. "It was very wrong to come. But you
frightened me so. Was it very wrong? Do you think it was wrong of me to
come, and despise me for it?"

"You promised," he whispered, eagerly; "you promised me five minutes.
Out of a whole lifetime, what is it? For I am going away from Warsaw
soon, and I shall never see you again perhaps, and shall have only the
memory of these five minutes to last me all my life--these five minutes
and that minute--that one minute in the hotel."

And he took her hand, which was quite near to him, somehow, on the stone
bench, and raised it to his lips.

"We are going away, too," she said. She was thinking also of that one
minute in the doorway of the salon, when she had touched high-water
mark. "We are on our way to St. Petersburg, and are only waiting
here till my uncle has finished some business affairs on which he is
engaged."

"But he is not a business man," said Kosmaroff, suddenly interested.
"What is he doing here?"

"I do not know. He never talks to me of his affairs. I