“The Prince thinks me dead; therefore I am a free woman,” she said, as we walked up Villiers Street. “I am no longer Princess, but Madame Valakhina. I still love you, Vladimir, but I can see it is useless, for if we met often the Nihilists would discover how they have been tricked. I must therefore leave you. To-night I go to Brussels and afterwards to Yvoir, on the Meuse, where I have taken a villa. Ivan is there already. When you can safely leave London, come to me.” We had ascended the steps and entered the Charing Cross terminus. The hands of the great clock pointed to twenty-five minutes past eight. “See,” she added, “I must go to the carriage. The train leaves at eight-thirty.” We walked along the platform, and she entered an empty first-class compartment, in which a porter had already arranged her wraps. When the man had taken his tip and departed, I said— “Farewell, Irene.” My heart was too full to say more. “No, no, Vladimir. Not farewell,” she sobbed, her large violet eyes wet with tears. “_Au revoir._ We shall meet again—some day.” And, as the Continental train moved slowly out of the station, she kissed her tiny hand to me, again murmuring— “_Au revoir!_ I owe my life to you.” CHAPTER IV. THE BURLESQUE OF DEATH. The Secret Police attached to the Russian Embassy in London are ever-watchful and untiring in their efforts to discover the plans and movements of our Party. It is, therefore, our constant endeavour to lead them upon false scents and direct their attention to quarters in direct opposition to that in which we are working. No monarch possesses such a prodigious organisation of police spies and _agents provocateurs_ as the Tzar. His emissaries are in every European city, and it must be admitted that for cunning and astuteness they are unequalled. Attached to each Embassy is the _Okhrannoë Otdelenïe_, consisting of some twenty or thirty detectives, whose duty it is to closely watch political suspects and forward elaborate reports of their movements to General Sekerzhinski, chief of the department at Petersburg.