Count Mellikoff, as Patouchki concluded, rose from his chair and walked quickly across the room to the window. As he did so, Ivor Tolskoi raised his fair head and youthful face, and looked after him. "Does he hesitate?" he said within himself. "By our Lady of Kazan, I wish the chance were but offered me. The chief should find me ready, and as adamant against the softest lures of the fairest woman of all her sex." Then he dropped his innocent blue eyes, and continued the monotonous pen-work on which he was engaged. Vladimir Mellikoff remained for several long moments beside the window, looking out with unseeing eyes upon the well-known scene before him; upon the gaily decorated sleighs and droschkies flying by; upon the frozen Neva, over whose glittering ice the skaters were deftly circling; upon the Austrian band playing before the Admiralty, their light-blue uniforms seeming like a bit of the sky above, fallen to earth; upon the huge Imperial Winter Palace, whose innumerable windows glanced like jewels in the crisp cold sunlight; upon the officers and sentinels relieving guard at its gates; upon the throng of brightly attired pedestrians coming and going, up and down the broad streets, in quick succession; he knew it all so well, had been part of it for so many years. Was not this very scene photographed upon his brain's camera, with all the high lights accentuated, and all the shadows deepened? Who shall say what wave of memory swept over him, as he stood there gazing down, seeing, yet not seeing the ever-changing panorama that since his boyhood had been dear to him; from the unique charm with which only youth and youth's memories can embellish the most ordinary scene? Did he hesitate, or draw back from this mission laid upon him; did his heart and soul shrink from hounding out a woman, whose wrongs and griefs had hurried her on to the perpetration of a crime, which even he felt to be but an outburst of that savage justice that reigns deep down in every human heart? Did he confess to himself that it was but coward's work to bring to bear upon this wretched fugitive all the political force of the Imperial Chancellerie, with himself at its head as its willing and revengeful agent? He knew well that if he undertook this mission he would carry it through to the very end, that was his nature; combining something of the sleuth-hound and the bulldog, he could track his prey indefatigably, and could fasten his cruel fangs upon it relentlessly when found. But was it worth his while, was the game noble enough; was not fighting a woman, with her own weapons, but poor sport for one who had won his spurs in signal service under far braver and more dangerous circumstances?