Anna Roskova, and Marya Verskaïa, and Hope, were sitting at the table with the samovar before them. He wondered, in the vague way in which one's mind, when tightly strung, wanders off at times on inconsequent trifles, which of them had slept on the hearth the previous night. He thought it would be Marya. He was sure it was not Hope. But none of the three looked as if they had slept for a week, and there was little speech between them. They had had time to say all that could be said, and now only a dull and hopeless expectation was left to them. He turned the handle and walked in, and the three speechless women were changed, after one moment of breathless wonder, into incarnate questions. They all talked at once and literally fell on his neck in their excitement, till Marya, unable to express her feelings in any other way, began to scream and beat her knees with her hands, and the floor with her feet. He got them quieted at last by declining to say a word till they gave him a cup of tea, and Hope's hand shook so as she poured it out that there was as much tea on the table as in the cup. Then-- "They have set me free, Hope," he said, "and we can go when we choose." "Oh, Paul!"--at which Anna and Marya opened their eyes very wide, and wondered if excess of joy had really turned her brain. She clasped her hands gratefully and gazed at him in wonder. "And I was fearing I might never see you again. God is very good to us!" "We have to leave Russia for good." "I shall be glad to go. It is hopeless. And Serge?" "He died last night." At which she only bowed her head silently, for she had known that he could not possibly live. "Did he know?" she asked at last. "Yes, Sokolof told him." "I am going to tell Polokof, and Hugo Svendt, and all the rest the good news," said Anna Roskova, jumping up. "And I will go with you," said Marya, coming to her senses. And they went off full of excitement and wonder, but, though they often thereafter spoke together of the strange fact that Hope Palma called her husband Paul, and that Serge was dead, they never discussed it except between themselves, and they never got to the bottom of it. "Shall we go, Hope, or shall we stop and help them through the summer?" he said thoughtfully. "You have done enough, Paul," she said, startled at his suggestion, for these last days had told on her. "Oh, let us go." "It is bound to break out again, you see, though it won't be as bad as it was before." "You have done enough," she said again. "Your life has been at stake these two years, and I--I long for the air of freedom." "The man you saw in the prison yard was the new doctor, Irbatsky. I don't much like the looks of him. I doubt if he has got much constitution left. If he goes under they'll be as badly off as ever, and I feel that I owe Sokolof much."