The sheer chicanery of it had an irresistible appeal to Peter. Like all Slavs, he loved the dramatic for the sake of itself, and he enjoyed proceeding by devious ways. Besides, the fact that Katerin and Michael were deliberately deceiving him, justified his own deception. Peter had actually been sorry, as he sat thinking through the night, that the identity of Michael had been made known so abruptly. It had all come with such amazing clarity and finality that he had found himself rather helpless when he realized that the whole business could be settled by the simple expedient of killing Michael without any more delay. He shrank from so hasty a conclusion to an affair which he had been dreaming about for twenty years. He thought that perhaps the Russian people had been caught in just such a staggering position by the easy success of their revolution. A whole nation thrown back upon its haunches, so to speak, and asking itself what it was to do now! Their minds had been so occupied for years in planning and plotting to overthrow the Czar and his government that they had neglected entirely to think of what might face them once they were successful. Their plans had not gone beyond the destruction of the Czar, and when he was destroyed, they needed more years to give thought to what was necessary for the good of the country and the people. It did not seem quite fair to them that the Czar had allowed himself to be overthrown so easily—he had destroyed their game, their one interest in life. So they began to sulk, and intrigue against each other. In the same way, Peter rather resented Lutoff’s directness in revealing the fact that the “old exile” was Michael Kirsakoff. It made the matter of killing Michael so absurdly easy! And the Slav insists upon making all things difficult—life, war, government—before he can enjoy them. He demands that Life shall be a puzzle, and examines its hidden purposes to discover why the Creator has tricked him into being a living being. He seeks a sinister motive behind his birth, and not being able to find one or to construct one out of his fancy, he kills himself because life is not worth living unless it can be proved to be a sort of divine persecution. The Slav needs a lot of trouble to keep himself happy. Convince him that the purpose of Life is to make him miserable and he is content. But Peter had become almost wholly Russian again, so he could not fully consider himself in the proper light. He had no intention of letting Michael escape. But he had the bothersome idea that he had to begin all over again to run Michael into a snare—a snare of Peter’s own devising, and built so leisurely that the joy of vengeance would have a satisfactory accretion of mental torture for Michael.