The warning given by the Princess more than ever convinced Wilfrid that his journey to St. Petersburg was likely to end in his arrest. Yet turn back he would not, now that he had once met with the Princess, whose whole manner showed that she moved in an environment of suspicion and peril, from which, if possible, he would deliver her. “You will not go to St. Petersburg?” she said in a soft pleading tone that vibrated to his heart. Wilfrid felt that to say he was bent on going would but increase the look of sadness on her fair face. He therefore temporised. “I will think over the matter.” “I have warned you. If you will not take my warning you are lost. I have no more to say,” she added—words that Wilfrid interpreted as a hint to go. “Your Highness,” he said, rising, “you know my name. Will you not favour me with yours ere I go?” She shook her bright flowing hair in tantalising fashion. “What good will it do you?” she said with a sad smile. “Let me remain unknown. Now go, and Heaven watch over you!” “And over you, too, Princess!” Wilfrid bowed, took up the lamp, and walked to the door. Arrived there, he cast one last lingering glance at the Princess. She was sitting up in bed watching him, her hand pressed to her side as if to repress the accelerated beating of her heart. Was its quickening due to fear, or to love, or to a mingling of both? He extinguished his lamp, conscious that even in the darkness the Princess’s eyes were upon him. He cautiously turned the key of the door, the steel tongue of the lock moved back almost silently. Wilfrid paused a few moments, fearing lest the sound, faint though it was, should have attracted attention. Finding that all remained still, he ventured to open the door and to look forth. By aid of a faint light shed by a lamp hung from the ceiling, he saw that the corridor was empty. His trained hearing caught neither the hasty movement of feet nor the sound of closing doors; nothing whatever occurred to suggest that any of the Princess’s retinue had been on the watch. Thus assured, he stepped out into the passage, quietly closing the door behind him. It was a new thing for Wilfrid to be stealing along a corridor at night like a thief, fearful of being seen or heard—an altogether humiliating experience, made endurable only by the thought that it was necessary for the honour, the safety, perhaps even the life, of the Princess. Twenty paces—he had a reason for taking accurate measurement—brought him to a landing, whence a short staircase led to the floor above, where was a corridor, similar in all respects to the one he had just left. Moving forward twenty paces along this, Wilfrid paused before a certain door. “Directly above the Princess’s room, Nadia said. Then this should be it. Now, pray Heaven, I am not disturbing some other person’s sleep.”