But the man went on pitilessly. “Twenty years ago,” he said, as one repeating a lesson, “you were known by the name of Lladislas Metrovitch. You were a subordinate member of the Brotherhood, and rendered it good though not material service. You were married twice, the second time to an American lady who had been the governess of your nieces. You had one child by her. You were well known for your scientific attainments. One day you were arrested, charged with sedition. You disappeared. Your property was confiscated, your household scattered. “Three years went by, during which you rotted in the dungeons of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. Then, by the aid of the Brotherhood, you escaped--old before your time, broken, feeble. You sought for your wife, your family. You could learn little of them. At last you heard that your wife was dead, and that her child and yours was being brought up in the household of the Grand Duke Ivan. You did not dare to claim the child openly, but, aided by the Brotherhood, you stole her and escaped with her to America.” The Professor raised his head. His shoulders shook. The forgotten horror of those by-gone days had all come back as if it had been but yesterday. He was about to speak when the man interposed. “I have more to tell,” he said. “When you fled from Russia you thought your wife was dead. You were deceived. She did not die until about a year ago.” “Not dead! Not dead!” The Professor’s face flushed red, then changed to a ghastly pallor. “Not dead!” he muttered. “No, not dead!” The worst was over, and the man hurried on. “There was much connected with your arrest that you did not know. You believed that it was due to your association with the Brotherhood. You were wrong. You were arrested because the Grand Duke Ivan admired your wife.” The Professor’s shoulders shook, but he said no word. Age dulls the capacity to feel; cools the passions as well as the affections. The old man had borne much; no further shock could greatly move him. “You disappeared. Ivan was kind to your wife, but declared that your arrest had been ordered by the Emperor himself, and that he could do nothing. Soon you were reported dead. Not long after he married her--morganatically, of course. She is not to be too much blamed. She was penniless, alone, in a strange land, with a child to support. She married him. When you stole your child you stole it from her.” The Professor’s dry lips moved. “I did not know,” he murmured. “No, you did not know. The fault was not yours, but that of the system we are trying to destroy. So much for the past! Now for the future. Will you obey the orders of the Brotherhood?” Maxime’s voice dropped, and he sat silent, watching the older man dumbly fighting through the shock. Pity was in his eyes, but relentlessness was there also--the relentlessness of the priest who pities the victim, but does not drop the sacrificial knife. Patiently he waited for the other to speak.