For his was, above all, an invitingly honest face, and one does not come across too many such. Perhaps also there was, in the eager face and strenuous figure, more than a suggestion that such of the good things of life as had come his way had been rather mental than material, had contributed more to his inner well-being than to his outer, that the lower things held but small interest for him, and that he had not greatly missed them. It was a very plainly furnished room, and Paul Pavlof knew intimately every single thing that was in it. Table, couch, chairs, white-tiled stove, green-shaded student's lamp, all were severely simple and without individuality, but each separate article was glorified in his eyes by the high service to which it was dedicated. He felt like kneeling and kissing the chairs because Hope Arskaïa used them, the floor because she walked on it, the lamp because she read and thought by it, for all these things pertained to the higher life. He wondered if she had ever thought of him as she sat in the chair or walked the floor. He knew she had, and moreover that her thoughts of him had been pleasant thoughts. But all the same---- There were neither books nor papers lying about. The lack of them contributed largely to the austerity of the apartment. But books and papers are dangerous things when one never knows at what moment the steps of the gendarmes may be heard on the stair. On the walls were three portraits. Paul eyed them with reverence, and stopped his wanderings now and again to look at them, as though they might afford him some clue to the answer Hope Ivanovna would give to the question he had come to put to her. The bearded man with the calm, intent face and thoughtful eyes was her father. He died in the Schlusselburg casemates, martyred for an idea. High thought and fixity of purpose were the dominant features here, and Pavlof's mouth tightened somewhat as he looked at it. Hope Ivanovna took after her father. The sweet-faced woman was her mother--the Scotchwoman. She died a few months before him, broken-hearted at the racking injustice of it all. Hope Ivanovna had her beauty and more, but her spirit was her father's. The bright, curly-headed boy was her brother. He died before she came into Paul's life for its brightening and embittering. He was standing before the portraits, finding likenesses in them all to Hope herself, when the door opened again, and Marya, with an apologetic look and shrug, ushered in another visitor--Serge Palma, a strapping, jovial fellow, with blue eyes and light hair, and full beard and moustache; very well dressed, and carrying an air of opulence and hearty good feeling towards himself and the rest of the world; in all respects the very antithesis of the first-comer. He stopped with a short laugh at sight of Pavlof, and Pavlof's forehead crumpled with annoyance at sight of him.