He could but notice with what ease Sonya talked with Berloff, that powerful antagonist with whom she was in deadly duel. He studied Berloff anew in the light of her startling revelation, and he saw anew the power, the resourcefulness, the relentless cunning behind that pale, refined face. In a struggle of wits against wits, he was an adversary that only the cleverest could hope to hold his own against. Moreover, he did not fight alone. Fighting with him, and for him, was his own army of near a hundred thousand spies, and besides these was the million of the standing army, and all the vast civil machinery of the State. Drexel drew a long breath. The prince’s mansion sat in a great park of snow-drooped evergreens. It was a big, box-like, sprawling pile, as are most of the older country seats of the Russian nobility, but the plainness of its exterior prepared a surprise for him who entered for the first time. The furnishings were rich and quiet in their tone; the walls of the main rooms were hung with paintings, studies, etchings, chiefly works from the hands of the big Frenchmen of the nineteenth century; and everywhere were exquisite little bronzes, the best private collection in Russia. Berloff, so said his friends, could have been an eminent artist himself, had birth not destined him to greater things. Drexel’s eyes were ever covertly watching Sonya--thrilled with the sense that he alone of all here knew the double part she played. Sonya at once became the dominant figure of the party. She did not seek attention, rather she seemed to disdain it; but, nevertheless, it focussed upon her, and with a magnificent indifference she accepted it as her due. In the evening, when they were all in the music room, the countess surprised one of Drexel’s surreptitious glances at Sonya. “You seem to think with the rest of the men, that there is only one woman present, the princess,” she whispered. “I had heard so much of her that I was curious,” Drexel returned. “Allow the elderly widow to tell you that attention paid the princess is attention wasted. She will smile on nothing less than royal blood. Since we left Petersburg she has given you one casual glance and two casual words. Are my statistics correct?” “They agree with my own.” Her voice sank to a bare whisper. “And of course you know she has no sympathy with our movement to gain freedom. She believes in the divine rights of the high-born--that they are superior and should rule and have the earth, and that the many should be their footstool.”