She took him back with her to Petrograd (St. Petersburg then) when she was sixteen, ten years before. She was dancing in a second-rate café, and attracted attention, so that the place became popular. A man named Konrad Markoff was the real owner, though he posed as an amateur patron. By his advice, the manager got Lyda to sign a hard and fast contract to dance at the same salary for the next five years. Markoff pretended a fatherly kindness for her; and she was invited occasionally to visit his wife, a Frenchwoman who had lived for years in England. One night Markoff brought a good-looking English boy of nineteen or so to the café. This boy applauded Lyda's dancing, and was introduced to her at his own request: The Duke of Claremanagh. From the first he was enthusiastic about her talent: not in love ("oh, not at all in love!" Lyda insisted), but anxious to "help a budding genius." At the end of a week he had thought out a practical plan. He would pay for the dancing lessons of which she had dreamed, as of an impossible Paradise: lessons from the great Sophia Verasova. It would cost a lot, yes, but he'd just had a few unexpected thousands left to him by an aunt. If Lyda wouldn't accept, they were sure to be spent on some foolery. She did accept. Perhaps she might have accepted even if Claremanagh hadn't made it quite clear how impersonal, how disinterested were his motives! Never--the dancer confessed--had she met a "good man" in those days. She would have made an idol of this handsome boy; but he didn't want her idolatry. He was fancying himself in love with the wife of a Don at Oxford just then! To free her from slavery at the café, Claremanagh paid a big indemnity; and at the time Lyda was grateful to Markoff for arranging the business, not then aware that he was the power behind the throne. It was nearly two years later when the truth was sprung upon the girl, just as she expected to go with Verasova to make her début in Paris. Markoff had wished her to be educated and become a great dancer without expense to himself. There were several ways in which she could be valuable, and unless she promised her services to him, he would prevent her from leaving Petrograd. Claremanagh had been too carelessly trustful to have the release from her contract framed in a legal document, and Lyda could still be compelled to carry it out. Unless she agreed to use the charm she had, the fame she might win, in the secret service of Russia, she _would_ be thus compelled!