Koshchei smiled. "No, Jurgen, I am not beginning all over again. For now I have never begun, and now there is no word of truth in anything which you remember of the year just past. Now none of these things has ever happened." "But how can that be, Prince?" "Why should I tell you, Jurgen? Let it suffice that what I will, not only happens, but has already happened, beyond the ancientest memory of man and his mother. How otherwise could I be Koshchei? And so farewell to you, poor Jurgen, to whom nothing in particular has happened now. It is not justice I am giving you, but something infinitely more acceptable to you and all your kind." "But, to be sure!" says Jurgen. "I fancy that nobody anywhere cares much for justice. So farewell to you, Prince. And at our parting I ask no more questions of you, for I perceive it is scant comfort a man gets from questioning Koshchei, who made things as they are. But I am wondering what pleasure you get out of it all?" "Eh, sirs," says Koshchei, with not the most candid of smiles, "I contemplate the spectacle with appropriate emotions." And so speaking, Koshchei quitted Jurgen forever. "Yet how may I be sure," thought Jurgen, instantly, "that this black gentleman was really Koshchei? He said he was? Why, yes; and Horvendile to all intents told me that Horvendile was Koshchei. Aha, and what else did Horvendile say!--'This is one of the romancer's most venerable devices that is being practised.' Why, but there was Smoit of Glathion, also, so that this is the third time I have been fobbed off with the explanation I was dreaming! and left with no proof, one way or the other." Thus Jurgen, indignantly, and then he laughed. "Why, but, of course! I may have talked face to face with Koshchei, who made all things as they are; and again, I may not have. That is the whole point of it--the cream, as one might say, of the jest--that I cannot ever be sure. Well!"--and Jurgen shrugged here--"well, and what could I be expected to do about it?" 50. The Moment That Did Not Count And that is really all the story save for the moment Jurgen paused on his way home. For Koshchei (if it, indeed, was Koshchei) had quitted Jurgen just as they approached Bellegarde: and as the pawnbroker walked on alone in the pleasant April evening one called to him from the terrace. Even in the dusk he knew this was the Countess Dorothy. "May I speak with you a moment?" says she. "Very willingly, madame." And Jurgen ascended from the highway to the terrace. "I thought it would be near your supper hour. So I was waiting here until you passed. You conceive, it is not quite convenient for me to seek you out at the shop." "Why, no, madame. There is a prejudice," said Jurgen, soberly. And he waited.