“I am about to be sent from this life. You may kill me over and over again, as you have already done. You may subject me to the most horrible penalties. But you can add nothing to what I have already endured. I do not fear death. You may kill my body, but you can not destroy my belief that the hour of the people’s freedom and happiness is coming.” The story of Marie Spiridonova rang from one part of the world to the other. It made little difference what the governor or the Tsar did to her, for in that hour the Russian people enthroned her in their hearts. Her youth, the depth of her passion, her tiny, frail, girlish form,--even her name itself,--became a pledge-word by which men swore that Russia should be free. In France they formed a league to save her, and England and America were quickly aroused to pity and to action. Perhaps because of the storm of protest at home and abroad, the death sentence was commuted to hard labor in Siberia. Marie Spiridonova asked no mercy for herself. She rejected personal pity. “If the people of America are interested in the fate of this Russian girl, tell them they must rather interest themselves in the fatherland of this girl,” she said. “I want nothing personally, because for a long time I have not existed personally. My heart and my soul are given to the cause of the people.” It is so with all the Russian revolutionists. Theirs is a movement of ideas rather than of individuals. They shrink from discussing themselves as individuals, and prefer always to dwell upon the cause for which they fight. In spite of this, the life of a revolutionist goes on in much the same channels as that of other people. They have their personal joys and sorrows, their great loves and little hates, their happiness and their own small individual heartbreaks. Marie Spiridonova was no exception to this rule. While she was in exile she met Alexander Dekonsky, a revolutionist from south Russia. He was young like herself, and apparently as full of revolutionary fire. They had their cause in common, and youth and life and loneliness. They fell in love. In the prison where Marie Spiridonova was incarcerated there were nine other women politicals. When the news came that Russia was free, the order of release contained the names of only eight of them. The jailer read them slowly, and the women looked from one to another with faces of joyful unbelief. The impossible was a fact. The thing for which they had dreamed and worked and suffered, and for which many of their comrades had already died, had happened. The jailer came to the end of the list. Two sharp streaks of pain appeared in the eyes of the two neglected ones. With trembling lips they spoke. “What about us?” they asked forlornly. The jailer shook his head. He was going to take no chances. The Revolution might not be such a success as it appeared. He would wait for other advices. “You stay,” he answered.