"I have never regretted it, my dear, and never shall, whatever comes or goes. You have opened the eyes of my understanding. In time I do believe you will make a fairly good man of me." "You are very good to me, and to give up so much for me, Serge. You are a bigger man than I thought." "With such a teacher who could fail to grow? I have only one regret in life, and that is that I cannot make you Tzarina and give you a free hand to work your fullest will." "I wish you could. But the one without the other would be very little use. It is not the Tzar or Tzarina who obstruct, but those below them. And how they will ever be brought round I do not know." "Well, all I want is that we should so carry on the work that it may not bring us into collision with the powers that be, for in that case the work would suffer check. We also, perhaps." "Our intentions are good, at all events," she said thoughtfully, "and for the rest, as you say, we can only trust in Providence." "Ah, my dear, good intentions they say, pave the road to--Siberia," he said, with a smile. "But we'll do our best to keep on the right side of that line, at all events." CHAPTER III HOW ONE WENT TO THE COUNTRY AND ONE WENT OUT OF IT Time came when, in spite of all her zeal for others, Hope Palma found it necessary, or at all events was prevailed upon, to think first of herself. And yet, again, perhaps it was rather a possible other than herself that she considered, when she allowed herself to be persuaded to renounce her work for a time and go away into the country with old Marya to look after her. She had contracted a touch of the low fever that prevailed in the poorer parts of the town, and found a difficulty in throwing it off. For, so long as she was in town there was neither rest nor respite for her. There was always so much to be done, and no appeal ever reached her without meeting full and prompt response. So Palma, who had an equal, nay, surely, a double, stake in the matter, put down his foot gently but firmly, and carried them both away from the strenuous life of the town to the restful quiet of a small estate he had close to Akerman, where the Dniester flows wide and free into the Black Sea. He saw them comfortably settled in the house of his steward, stayed a few days with them, and thenceforward divided his time between Akerman and Odessa. One day, when he came, he brought with him news which it was useless attempting to withhold from Hope, since the matter was being talked of everywhere and had made itself felt throughout the empire. Scherbatzky, chief of police at Odessa, had been shot one night as he was driving home from his office, and was dead before they could get him into his house. The usual sweeping arrests followed, but, wide as the net was cast, the actual perpetrator of the crime remained undiscovered. Whence--rigorous enactments and much undeserved suffering.