"He is a hard man," admitted Pavlof wearily. He had just come from an ineffectual tussle with the hard man. "Hard men and soft men are all alike when they are dead men," said Madame grimly. "That does no good, Anna Vassilievna. The next man is just the same. The others never learn." "I'm not so sure of that," said Madame. "If one man is killed for his brutality the next is like to go warily lest he follow." But Pavlof shook his head. "Force never was a remedy, and it never will be. If you killed half-a-dozen Governors there would still come one who would grind us all to powder. The spring is poisoned. Until the source is sweet the water will be bitter," and weary as he was--for the bruising of the inner man tells also on the outer--he picked up his cap and flung on his coat, and went back to see if the imminent shadow had settled down on any of his patients. If Zazarin lost any of them it should not be for lack of warning. Hope and Anna Roskova sat before the stove hopeful of better news when he returned. But he did not come back that night, and they understood that matters were at a critical stage. In the kinship of the great shadow, Anna Roskova began to speak of things that had come within her own experience, and Hope sat frozen with horror at the recital of hardships and persecutions almost past belief--of solitary confinements, prolonged till richly dowered minds gave way; of brutal whippings, the indignities alone of which would have sufficed to break most women's spirits; of life in the huts of the Northern barbarians, which some of their company had endured and marvellously survived; of batterings at the hands of brutal Cossacks; of despairing suicides; of more merciful shootings deliberately provoked. And in the hearing of such things, bravely borne by men and women whose gravest fault was too great a love for their down-trodden fellows, Hope's own troubles seemed light and of small account. She took shame to herself for taking them so much to heart, forgetting that the wearing of her body had had much to do with the depressing of her soul. She longed to confide in Madame Roskova. The very relation of the whole matter between herself and Pavlof would have been such a mighty relief, both as to the past and as to the future. In the light of full knowledge Anna Roskova could have made things so easy and straightforward for her. But Pavlof had judged otherwise, and to act against his advice might bring down upon them, and on Serge, troubles beyond her understanding.