"'Last night you asked me for my name. I would not tell you then. Now you shall know. I am the Countess de Rescka Smolenski. I live in Cracow. My husband died in Venice four days ago. I took him there because he was ill,--so ill that he was carried in Polaff's arms from the gondola to his bed. The Russian government permitted me to take him to Italy to die. One Pole the less is of very little consequence. A week ago this permit was revoked, and we were ordered to report at Cracow without delay. Why, I do not know, except perhaps to add another cruelty to the long list of wrongs the government have heaped upon my family. My husband lingered three days with the order spread out on the table beside him. The fourth day they laid him in Campo Santo. That night my maid fell ill. Yesterday morning a second peremptory order was handed me. I am now on my way home to obey.' "Then followed in slow, measured sentences the story of her life: married at seventeen at her father's bidding to a man twice her age; surrounded by a court the most dissolute in eastern Europe; forced into a social environment that valued woman only as a chattel, and that ostracized or defamed every wife who, reverencing her womanhood, protested against its excesses. For five years past--ever since her marriage--her husband's career had been one long, unending dissipation. At last, broken down by a life he had not the moral courage to resist, he had succumbed and taken to his bed; thence, wavering between life and death, like a burnt-out candle flickering in its socket, he had been carried to Venice. "'Do you wonder, now, that my faith is gone, my heart broken?' "We were nearing Vienna; the stations were more frequent; our own carriage began filling up. For an hour we rode side by side, silent, she gazing fixedly from the window, I half stunned by this glimpse of a life the pathos of which wrung my very heart. When we entered the station she roused herself, and said to me half pleadingly:-- "'I cannot bear to think I may never see you again. To-night I must stay in Vienna. Will you dine with me at my hotel? I go to the Metropole. And you? Where did you intend to go?' "'To the Metropole, also.' "'Not when you left Venice?' "'Yes; before I met you.' "'There is a fate that controls us,' she said reverently. 'Come at seven.' "When the hour arrived I sent my card to her apartment, and was ushered into a small room with a curtain-closed door opening out into a larger salon, through which I caught glimpses of a table spread with glass and silver. Polaff, rigid and perpendicular, received me with a stiff, formal recognition. I do not think he quite understood, nor altogether liked, his mistress's chance acquaintance. In a moment she entered from a door opposite, still in her black garments with the nun's cuffs and broad collar. Extending her hand graciously, she said:--