s_. How often have I told you that?"

"They make life possible," Arithelli answered softly.

Again the man stared and marvelled. Verily, here was another being who
was neither "Becky Sharp" nor "Fatalite." The exultation, the triumph
of one loved and desired, was hers for the moment. Who, seeing her
now, could have the heart to warn her of inevitable disillusion, the
doubts and fears, the clinging and the torments that are the heritage
of all womenkind.

He, too, had once dreamed foolish dreams.

He gripped her by the shoulder and forced her to look at him.

"Vardri is your lover? You shall answer me before I leave this room."

She did not flinch, or blush, or look away.

"I love him."

Joy shone in her widely open eyes. Love hovered about her mouth, and
the passion that had stirred in him momentarily shrank back ashamed.
He pushed back her hair with a rough caress.

"It's all right, _ma chere_. You needn't be afraid. I shall not be
here to advise you soon, and all I have to say now is, never imagine
yourself secure for an instant. Sobrenski is bound to discover this in
the course of time, and he has seen this sort of thing before, which
will not make him any more merciful. He has watched human nature long
enough to know that where there is what you would call love, people
want to create, they no longer want to destroy. If, as you say, you
have made no plans, then make them. And now you'd better go to bed,
unless you want to look more like a ghost than usual to-morrow."

As he went out into the moonlit street Emile knew that he had taken the
first step on his _Via Crucis_. He did not call it that, for of
religion in the orthodox sense he possessed nothing, but he knew that
his feet were set upon the path where snow and blood would mingle in
his footprints. He was going back to Russia, where death would be a
thing to be welcomed and desired. He had listened to the tales of
escaped prisoners, and he knew that no words could exaggerate this
frozen Hell in which flourished vices unnamable, where men rotted
alive, and women strangled themselves with their own hair, or cut their
throats with a scrap of glass to escape the brutalities of a gaoler or
Cossack guard.

He wondered whether it would be Akatui, or the mines, for him. It was
no use to try and delude himself that he could escape the police.

He had got out of Russia by the skin of his teeth last time, and, even
if he managed to get his des