One day Madame Wyrubewa, whether accidentally or intentionally, left the Colonel alone with the Czarina. He saw his opportunity, and began more seriously than he had ever done before to implore her to make an effort to save herself. The young man grew quite eloquent, until Alexandra, moved beyond words, started weeping in real earnest and asked him how he could suggest the possibility of a reconciliation between her and the Czar, in view of his own feelings for her, the nature of which she had guessed for some time. To her surprise, the Colonel fell on his knees before her and told her that it was because of these very feelings that he had felt himself justified in speaking to her as he had done. He was nothing beside her, and all he could do was to worship her from afar, and to try to come to her help, both for her own sake and for that of their country, that required from them both the supreme sacrifice he was asking of her. For once the cold and haughty Czarina was startled out of her usual indifference, and when they parted she had promised her devoted knight and admirer that, though she might not make an effort to win back the love of her husband, yet she would not repulse him, as she had done lately, if he made any attempt to return to her. She promised that on the love she owned to him that she felt for him, and on that of the one which they both had for this great Russia, which Orloff had never forgotten even amid the fervor of his passion. When Madame Wyrubewa came back to the room where she had left her two friends, she saw that something had happened, but she was far too clever to question them, and when the Empress said it was time for her to go home she simply offered to accompany her, hoping that something might be told to her during their walk back to the Palace. For once Alexandra was silent, and parted from Anna without betraying anything of what had passed during that half-hour when she had been left alone with the first man who had aroused some interest in her otherwise impassible heart. Colonel Orloff was not so discreet, in the sense that he related to his friend all that had taken place between him and the Czarina--related it with such agitation and poignant regret that she saw at once that she was in the presence of a feeling capable of driving the man who was under its influence to any heights of personal sacrifice. She then communicated to him a plan out of which she hoped to find the solution of the troubles against which the Empress was struggling so bravely, but apparently so uselessly. It was a daring plan and it required much daring to accomplish it; but the future of the woman they both loved was at stake, and she thought they ought to risk it.