He turned and was gone, leaving Katerin standing with folded arms staring at the open door through which he had passed. Her face was white, her lips drawn tightly together. She remained thus, listening to the footfalls of her father and of the soldiers going down the stairs. When she could hear them no more, Wassili came up and peered in at the door, his eyes full of terror, and by his look silently questioning the truth of the scene he had just witnessed below. “See that the doors are properly closed, Wassili,” said Katerin, and the _moujik_ went below again. She walked to a bench and sat down facing the stove, partly turned away from Shimilin who stood in the center of the room. She ignored his presence, but sat watching the flames dancing inside the stove behind the iron door, her hands gripped together in her lap. Shimilin walked to the window and smoothed away the frost to look into the courtyard and the street. Soon he turned from the window and looked at Katerin. “You may as well tell me where the money may be found,” he said. “There is nothing to be gained by keeping it—and much to lose. I gave you your chance, but you preferred to trust Zorogoff. You would not give it to me—Zorogoff will take it. Where is the money to be found?” “Where?” she asked, speaking as if in a dream, and not looking at him. “Where is the money to be found? That is a question.” “I do not enjoy this business,” said Shimilin, cajolery in his voice. “If you would trust me——” “I trust only in God,” she said. “We trusted the Cossacks and they have turned against us. We are in your hands.” Shimilin walked across the room, passing behind Katerin, and drew a glass of water from the samovar and poured into it some tea from the pot on the top of the samovar. He stood examining the things on the table, drinking the hot tea noisily. There came the sharp crack of a board being broken in the courtyard below. Katerin turned her head in an attitude of listening, startled by the noise, and conscious that its meaning might hold some import of terrible significance. She had supposed that her father had gone from the house with the soldiers. She stood up to go to the window. Shimilin stepped quickly in her way. “You are not to look out,” he said calmly. “All that you are to do is to tell me where the money may be found. Why do you make all this trouble about it? I tell you it is bad. You could be happy and gay if you would trust me.” “Perhaps you will have another glass of tea,” suggested Katerin. She returned to the bench and sat down to mask her worry over the noise she had heard in the court. “Do you wish to see your father again?” asked Shimilin. Katerin looked at him, unable to conceal the swift terror which struck at her heart with the Cossack’s words. He returned her look with steady eyes. “I wish to see my father again, if it be God’s will,” she said. “Zorogoff is God,” said Shimilin. She gave no reply. “I warn you—you must submit to Zorogoff’s will.”