“True,” she admitted at once. “He spends his time between Harbin and Chita. By the time we got there, he might be on his way back here.” “Would you advise waiting?” he asked. “That is for you to decide.” “Then we shall go to Harbin,” he announced. “This is a serious thing to me. As I told you last night, I have waited twenty years to find Kirsakoff.” “It should not be difficult,” she said casually. “Not with your help,” he said, with a play at enthusiasm. “If I find him, it will be because——” He stopped short. What he was about to say was that if he found Kirsakoff, it would be due to her. But that was not true—she was concealing Kirsakoff. Peter felt he owed her nothing there. “Perhaps you would prefer to wait till you feel better,” suggested Katerin. She was still worried about his constrained manner, and not quite sure that the change which she detected in him was due to his feeling badly, as he claimed. She sensed an undercurrent of agitation, and though the reason of it was far beyond her intuitions, she knew he had undergone some change during the night—there was something hostile in his eye, something in the slow turning of his head which revealed to her the brooding rage which burned in his brain. “I feel well enough,” he said, putting his hand to his ruffled brow. “The pain has gone, but I feel dull and stupid. I hope you will forgive my—stolidity.” He forced a smile, and threw back his head and shook it as if to dispel a heaviness. “When should we attempt to get away?” she asked. “We should not delay, I think. Is it not likely that the Ataman will be down upon the hotel at any time?” She shivered slightly. “Every minute is precious.” “The sooner away, the sooner we shall come up to Kirsakoff,” he said, and rose to take a turn about the room. Then he came and stood over her, looking down into her face. “Take some more tea,” she said. “If we are to go away, you must feel as well as possible.” “True, I must. Suppose you bring your father here—and the three of us talk over the plan of going—to Harbin.” Katerin gave him a quick glance. Once more she had caught in Peter’s manner a glimmer of the fact that he was holding himself in leash against an impulse to action which he found it painfully difficult to restrain. He frightened her a little, for there was that about his mouth, about his eyes, and in his voice which told her that this man was ready to slay. “My father is still asleep, I am afraid,” she said. “But I know all the plans that have been made. We are to leave by droshky—and Slipitsky will forge passports for us. The old Jew is very shrewd about such things. He helped many a man escape from—the old prison.” Peter wondered if her reluctance to let him see her father could be due to a suspicion that Peter already knew that her father was Kirsakoff. “Droshky to Harbin! It sounds impossible! By droshky more than a thousand versts in this time of the year?”