"I will arrange that. It is damnable. Let me know if Madame decides to go and I will procure her conveyance. There is Zazarin's tarantas. He will probably never need it again. Oh, it is damnable!" and Sokolof cursed his way back to his own quarters, while Pavlof sat with his head in his hands and tried to look this last blow of fate squarely in the face. For life among the outer barbarians of the Yakut uluses, ignorant even of the most elementary decencies of life, cut off absolutely from civilisation, is life at its very lowest and its very worst. How could he ask Hope to accompany him to such a place? How dissuade her from going? Nay, he knew beforehand that she would go. And, sitting there in utterest misery, he forecasted the marring and degrading of her bright young life and the breaking of their newborn happiness. But there was little time for sitting still. Hope must be told and at once, and he went off heavily to Colonel Zazarin's house. He paid a somewhat perfunctory visit to his patient and beckoned Hope out of the room. She had seen the trouble in his face and followed him anxiously. "What is it?" she asked, with a hand on his arm. "Bad news, dearest. The worst possible news,"--at the moment he could conceive no worse. "A special messenger has arrived from St. Petersburg. I am ordered to Yakutsk." "Yakutsk!" she gasped, for she knew all that it implied. "Sokolof is beside himself. He has been endeavouring to better our condition. He looks on this as their answer. It is grievous treatment, but there is nothing for it but to submit. But, Hope, it is possible it may be only for a time. Sokolof, I know, will do his utmost in the matter. For yourself, dearest----" "Where you go, I go," she broke in hastily. "But, Hope--Yakutsk!" "I know, I know. But we will not be separated." "God help us!" he said. "I dare not think of you there." "And I dare not think of myself anywhere but there, Paul. No, we will go together. When is it?" "To-morrow." "To-morrow! Then we have no time to lose. I will go at once and get things ready." "And I must go and tell Sokolof that you decide to go." CHAPTER XXIII HOW ONE CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD Captain Sokolof's orderly never for one moment thought of standing on ceremony with the doctor, who was in and out of the very prison all day long. He showed him at once to the room where the captain was entertaining his guest. Pavlof crossed the threshold and stood numb and dazed. His eyes blinked at the newcomer in a stare of petrified horror. Then they wrenched themselves away and fixed hypnotically on Sokolof, who gazed back, at him with pity. Sokolof thought he understood. He knew what Yakutsk meant. He knew that few survived it, and that most would prefer death to trying it, and that for a woman it was impossible.