"Permit me, Excellency," said Pavlof, through his teeth, and carried her against his pounding heart into the tiny bedroom, boarded off one end of the cottage, and Madame hurried in after them. "Can I be of any assistance?" asked the Governor, when he came back. "None, I thank your Excellency. She will come round presently. Madame is attending her. No doubt the journey has been a trying one." "And your patients?" "The cold is helping us. Captain Sokolof has taken the turn. We shall be rid of it in a month. But it will be as bad as ever in the spring unless----" "All your representations have gone forward, but there is no reply yet." "Your Excellency would be amply justified in authorising the work. It is a case of many lives or deaths." "You know what they are," said the Colonel, with a shrug. "We are a long way off and the nearer things get the first claim. However, we will see, if no word comes. One is not absolutely required to commit suicide because those others are too busy with their own concerns. I trust your wife will not suffer from her journey." He went out and Pavlof hurried back into the inner room. Madame Roskova had opened Hope's cloak and dress and was bathing her forehead with cold water. "She will be all right in a minute or two," she said. "Go and make the tea. It will do her more good than anything." "Go you and make the tea, Anna Vassilievna, and I will see to her," said Paul, and Madame gave him her place and left them. Presently Hope's eyes fluttered, opened, and she lay gazing starkly up in the glimmer of light that came from the fire in the outer room. Pavlof waited quietly till her eyes turned questioningly on him. "Where is he?" she asked in a whisper. "He is on his way back home by this time, I hope," said Paul softly. "On his way home? Serge on his way home--and I here? Oh, my God!" and she sat up and gazed at him in a very stupor of amazement. "How? Why? What does it all mean?" jerked from her trembling lips. "We did it for the best, as we thought, Hope Ivanovna. We met in the prison at Tomsk and changed names so that he might get back to you the sooner." "You changed names?" she echoed vaguely. "Serge took my place at Minusinsk for simple exile. I came on to Kara instead of him. He was to get away in the spring and get back to you as soon as he could. Now listen to me, Hope Ivanovna, for all our lives are at stake. Here they know me only as Serge Palma. You must suffer that or Serge will suffer." "They know you only as Serge Palma?" she gasped, repeating his words as a child repeats a lesson it does not understand. "Yes. But you must speak softly, Hope Ivanovna. Here I am Serge Palma," he said, slowly and distinctly, "and if by any mischance they discover the truth it will mean disaster to Serge, and to you, and to me. Do you understand?" "Oh, I do not know! I do not know. You must give me time, Paul."