"And you been parted from him for nearly two years!" said Madame reprovingly. "Why, my dear, you would hate me like poison before morning." "Oh, I won't! I won't! I promise you I won't! I will love you all the more if you will stop, dear Madame. I beg of you to stop." "Nu, then! I do not understand!" said Madame, looking curiously from Hope to Pavlof and back again. "It is a cold wife, surely. Have you been bad to her, or is she not thawed yet? What she needs is your arms round her again, Serge Petrovitch. She has forgotten the feel of it and is a little bit afraid of you. I will take myself off as quick as I can, and then you can have her all to yourself," and she went on into the inner room, murmuring, "No, no! I know better than that," and they heard her still rumbling to herself like a good-humoured volcano, as she gathered her things together. Hope's eyes, as she turned on Pavlof, were the eyes of the hunted doe at bay. "She must stop," she said, in a fierce whisper. "If you don't make her stop I will go out and sleep in the snow, whatever comes of it." And, seeing by his face that he was at his wits' end, her own came to his relief, "Tell her I am ill and need her help." "Anna Vassilievna," he said, going to the door of the inner room. "My wife begs you to stop--for a night or two at all events. She is worn and broken with the journey. She would be grateful for your company and assistance." "And you? You say so too?" said Madame, coming to the door and looking out on them in unqualified surprise. "Well, well! You are a strange pair, surely! But if you ask it, Serge Petrovitch, I may not say you nay, after all you have done for me. But I must run across again and tell Marya and Dmitri, and assuredly they will think me crazy--and you too, no less." And presently she was back again, and set about getting supper ready, but each time her eyes lighted on Hope's downcast face and languid figure, she shook her head and said to herself, "Da! I do not understand! I hope she hasn't got the fever." And Paul Pavlof fell asleep on his mat before the stove just before daylight, pondering vaguely the strange workings of the feminine heart and mind, slightly oppressed at thought of this complication of burdens thrown upon him by Hope's unexpected arrival, yet with a warm inner glow at his heart, like the core of heat in the white ashes of the stove, at thought of her there under his roof. Hope! Hope Ivanovna! Ah!--Hope Palma! But in spite of it all, or because of it all, when he did fall asleep he slept soundly, for in the short space of an hour he had passed through livelier emotions than Kara usually knows in a year. CHAPTER XII HOW HOPE CAME SLOWLY BACK It took Hope Palma many days to accommodate herself to the strange circumstances in which she found herself, but it needed very little simulation on her part to play the role of invalid.