Gabrielle Rupinsky, the speaker's countrywoman, who was seated at his right side, turned her head to flash into his face one look from her calm eyes. A silence followed the remark; not an uncomfortable period, but rather one of that satisfaction which we feel when a good talker ventures out from the ruts of conversation and trite opinion. Then Tweed, a round-faced, optimistic schoolboy of a man, said, cheerfully:-- "How comforting! Let us go and exterminate our enemies before they get wind of so pleasing an assurance and exterminate us. Alas, though, we have not altogether done with Leviticus yet; still the hangman takes care of our consciences." In the first place they had been speaking about echoes. Several of the company had heard wonderful echoes in different parts of the world. George Etheridge had told of an echo in Bavaria which had startled him--as it startles all to whom it speaks. He said: "You row out to the middle of the lake. There is an immense rugged cliff on one hand, and on the other a dense wood of pines. You fire a pistol. The sound rolls from between precipice and forest, tossed from one to the other, gathering in intensity and power, until it breaks like a clap of thunder overhead. The effect is certainly terrifying. Shall I tell you of what it made me think? Of one of those imprudent acts, one of those small sins that we commit in an unconsidered moment, which is the trifling cause of growing and overwhelming effects that end in cataclysm." The conversation having been given this serious turn, first one and then another of Etheridge's guests recalled stories of sins that had worked in lives as worms through a ship's planks. Tweed mocked. He was rarely grave, but his easy heart was valued by all who knew him. He said, "You will all give yourselves a nightmare at bedtime. Come, let us have a murder yarn to wind up with." And so Vassilitch, who was no stranger to the fatalism of the Slav, and who on that account had listened with considerable interest to the dialogue, had suddenly roused himself to utter his views expressed above. "I will repeat my advice," said he. "If you ever kill a man do not think about it afterwards. Ah! the fantasies that we invent to torment ourselves with!" Gabrielle was compelled to look at the speaker once more. As the guests of Etheridge they had seen much of one another during the past three days. She liked to have him by her side because he was her countryman; also, to her eyes, he appeared to be the strongest man in the company. And he? Whenever Mademoiselle Rupinsky came in late he was silent to taciturnity; and when she took her place he thawed. "You are not--you cannot be--in earnest?" said Gabrielle. "Never more so, mademoiselle." "It is your profession that has killed your sentiment," explained Etheridge. "As you will."