"No, no!" he said, "there is nothing left for me but to watch. I shall watch De Chauxville," he added, turning to that graceful skater with a grim smile. De Chauxville nodded and laughed. "You have been doing that any time this twenty years, mon ami," he said, as he stood upright on his skates and described an easy little figure on the outside edge backward. "And have always found you on slippery ground." "And never a fall," said De Chauxville over his shoulder, as he shot away across the brilliantly lighted pond. It was quite dark. A young moon was rising over the city, throwing out in dark relief against the sky a hundred steeples and domes. The long, thin spire of the Fortress Church--the tomb of the Romanoffs--shot up into the heavens like a dagger. Near at hand, a thousand electric lights and colored lanterns, cunningly swung on the branches of the pines, made a veritable fairyland. The ceaseless song of the skates, on ice as hard as iron, mingled with the strains of a band playing in a kiosk with open windows. From the ice-hills came the swishing scream of the iron runners down the terrific slope. The Russians are a people of great emotions. There is a candor in their recognition of the needs of the senses which does not obtain in our self-conscious nature. These strangely constituted people of the North--a budding nation, a nation which shall some day overrun the world--are easily intoxicated. And there is a deliberation about their methods of seeking this enjoyment which appears at times almost brutal. There is nothing more characteristic than the ice-hill. Imagine a slope as steep as a roof, paved with solid blocks of ice, which are subsequently frozen together by flooding with water; imagine a sledge with steel runners polished like a knife; imagine a thousand lights on either side of this glittering path, and you have some idea of an ice-hill. It is certainly the strongest form of excitement imaginable--next, perhaps, to whale-fishing. There is no question of breathing, once the sledge has been started by the attendant. The sensation is somewhat suggestive of a fall from a balloon, and yet one goes to the top again, as surely as the drunkard will return to his bottle. Fox-hunting is child's play to it, and yet grave men have prayed that they might die in pink. Steinmetz was standing at the foot of the ice-hill when an arm was slipped within his. "Will you take me down?" asked Maggie Delafield. He turned and smiled at her--fresh and blooming in her furs. "No, my dear young lady. But thank you for suggesting it." "Is it very dangerous?" "Very. But I think you ought to try it. It is a revelation. It is an epoch in your life. When I was a younger man I used to sneak away to an ice-hill where I was not known, and spend hours of the keenest enjoyment. Where is Paul?" "He has just gone over there with Etta." "She refuses to go?" "Yes," answered Maggie.