"It is your life you are giving for me, Paul Ivanuitch," said Palma hoarsely. "For you and for Hope Ivanovna. But perhaps not. I shall try east from Kara if the chance offers." Palma was silent for a time, the magnitude of the sacrifice struggling within him against the sudden mighty hope that Pavlof's offer had kindled. "It is too much, Pavlof," he said brokenly at last. "You promised." "Ay, but--this----" "You must think of your wife--and the child." "Ah God--the child!" and he strove against it no more. Nine months later, "Serge Palma," lean and wiry, and worn with the road, but cheerful of face, and with that in his deep-set eyes which drew men's liking, trudged through the deep spring snows into Kara and found his place among the forlorn and downtrodden. And in Yeniseisk, "Paul Pavlof," big and bluff, fair-haired and blue-eyed, listened eagerly for the song of the cuckoo which should tell him it was time to be up and going. And this great sacrifice and its acceptance were tribute to the love two men bore to one most gracious woman. CHAPTER VIII HOW HOPE WRESTLED WITH SATAN AND GOT HER OWN WAY "It is well with the child, Marya," said Hope Palma, as she rose from her knees by the bedside and kissed the dead face of her three-months old baby. But Marya Ostronaya wept inconsolably. "Dear heart!--Matushka! It is no good to weep--he is safely home. He will never know prison cell and chains. He was dearer to me than my life, but I thank God He has taken Him to Himself. And I do not think he suffered, Masha." "No, he did not suffer. See the smiling face of him," wailed old Marya. "It is the face of an angel from heaven." "In heaven, Masha, dear, and that is still better. He will have found my father and mother. Ah, how they will welcome him! He is safe. And I am glad." Her face was thinner than it used to be, chastened to a rarer delicacy by the troubles of the past six months, and the great dark-blue eyes seemed larger by reason of the soft touch of sorrow below them. But the brave true spirit shone through undimmed, seemed even to shine the brighter for the fining and chiselling of its tenement. Since the day she had, at Serge's earnest persuasion, gone away into the country for the sake of the expected one, troubles had pursued her like a pack of winter wolves. That hasty and, in her condition, recklessly dangerous visit to the city flung her on the rack concerning him. All their efforts after news of Palma beat themselves to pieces against the adamantine silence of the authorities, like spray against a rock. He had been arrested and carried off by the police--simply that, and nothing more. He had disappeared from human ken, as many another had done before him.