“Yes,” said Isma. “If there were anything in what the old astrologers used to say we could look upon his rising as an omen. And yet we have very little reason surely for taking as an emblem of war a world in which wars have been unheard of for thousands of years.” “I wonder when that time will come on earth?” said Alma bitterly. “If ever it does! We terrestrials seem to be too hopelessly wicked and foolish for such wisdom as that. “Mankind will never have a fairer opportunity of working out its redemption than it had after the Terror, and yet here, after four generations of peaceful happiness and prosperity, the wickedness of one woman is able to set the world ablaze again. Our forefathers were wise, but they would have been wiser still if they had stamped that vile brood out utterly. Their evil blood has been the one drop of venom that has poisoned the whole world’s cup of happiness!” As Alma spoke these last words her grey eyes grew dark with sudden passion under her straight-drawn brows. Her breast heaved with a sudden wave of emotion, and the sentences came quickly and fiercely from the lips which Isma had never heard speak in anger before. “Yes,” she replied, rather sadly than angrily, “perhaps it would have been better for the world if they had done so, or, at anyrate, if they had shut them up for life, as they did the criminals and the insane in the middle of the last century. But we must remember, even in our own sorrow and anger, that this Olga Romanoff is in her way not altogether unlike our own Angel was in hers.” “Surely you’re speaking sacrilege now!” interrupted Alma. “How can the evil be like the good under any circumstances?” “No, I am not,” said Isma, with a smile. “Remember how Natasha was trained up by the Master in undying hate of Russian tyranny, and how she inherited the legacy of revenge from her mother and him. No doubt this Olga has done the same, and she has been taught to look upon us as the Terrorists looked upon the Tsar and his family. “We are the descendants of those who flung her ancestor from his throne, extinguished his dynasty, and sent him to die in Siberia. I would kill her with my own hand if I could, and believe that I was ridding the world of a curse, but surely we two daughters of Aeria are wise enough to be just even to such an enemy as she is.” “But she has done worse than kill us,” Alma almost hissed between her clenched teeth. “If she had a thousand lives and we took them one by one they would not expiate her crime against us, or equal the hopeless misery that she has brought upon us. “What is mere death, the swift transition from one stage of existence to another, compared with the hopeless death-in-life to which her wanton wickedness has condemned you and me, or to the calamities which she has brought upon the world?”