Dmitri, when he heard of Madame Roskova's coming, breathed a silent but fervent "God be thanked!" and welcomed her warmly. Marya launched twenty questions at her concerning Madame Palma before she had got her cloak off, and Anna, knowing her friend, replied with discretion and supplied no grist but only chaff to Marya's chattering little mill. So Hope Palma and Paul Pavlof entered upon a new phase of the strangely twisted story of their lives--a phase which tested and tried them both in many ways, and was to Pavlof as the breaking of seals and the dipping, chancily and hazardously, into the pages of the unknown. He learnt much of woman and her ways, and at times it set his head spinning, and at times twisted his heart-strings. Learning is bitter-sweet; at times a deep delight, and again, a long travail; and the understanding of even one woman was beyond the wisdom of the Preacher whose experience had been wider than most. They sat long before the stove in silence that first night of their solitariness, both their minds running swiftly in the same direction but on different lines. When would they hear from Serge? Would they ever hear from him? Supposing they did not? Supposing they heard of his death? The silence was verging on the irksome when Pavlof broke it, in fear that it might become painful to her. "I am glad you let Anna Vassilievna go, Hope Ivanovna. It tells me that you trust me." "She has been very good to me and I shall always be grateful to her, but----" "Since you can trust yourself in my hands, it will make things easier for you to be without her, I think." "It would have been impossible to go on much longer like that." "She is a good woman----" "She was growing importunate about us. If we could only have told her the whole matter--" "A whisper of it getting out would have destroyed us all. Anna Vassilievna is more trustworthy than most, but the matter is so very strange that it would have been almost too much to expect her to keep it entirely to herself. Even if she did not speak of it her manner might have set folks wondering, and one cannot be too careful when lives are at stake." "I have no doubt you are right. In any case it is too late to tell her now," she said quietly. There was in this new atmosphere a sense at once of relief and restraint. With Anna Vassilievna's puzzled eye no longer on them, they were able to be themselves again, without necessity for guarding every word and look. And this in itself was a mighty relief, for false pretence is mother to awkwardness, and the natural man is the honest one, the man who is just himself and claims no more. And now, too, they could discuss their affairs in a way that was not possible before, and therein also lay elements of enlightenment.