The other caught his meaning. He smiled as he said, simply, "My friend, you do not know this woman." "But I know the Trans-Baikal, and the frozen horror of your northern swamps. And I have seen a gang of exiles, in their long, earth-coloured coats, women and men, chained together, living statues of despair, tramping, tramping, and the soldiers with their bayonets fixed----" "Don't!" said Stefanovitch. But the other went on unheedingly. "And I have seen your northern forests in winter, shrouded in snow, with an Arctic wind rattling down the pine needles, bending the cedars, and the fir trees making a sound that gives you the shivers. And I have seen the wolves there. They appear to rise out of the ground. Once they chased me for three leagues. We were in a tarantass, and were nearly caught, by Jove! What brutes! Every tooth looked like a dagger. And frequently a poor wretch will escape from a convict station and try to hide himself in these forests----" [Illustration: "HE PERCEIVED THAT SHE WAS YET STANDING, GAZING AFTER HIM."] "Will you stop?" cried Stefanovitch, covering his eyes. "----will endeavour to conceal himself in one of these forests; but either he starves to death or the wolves get him, or perhaps a party of soldiers, say Cossacks, come upon him and take him for a _varnak_. And I have known one instance in which the man, having resisted authority, was lashed to a tree to wait for the wolves. He succeeded in releasing himself, it is true; and ultimately he escaped from the country, but----" "Enough, enough!" implored Stefanovitch, as if appalled by some memory that had seared heart and brain. "----but next time he will not meet with such fortune." Tweed rose and smashed down the window. "Why do you recall these things to me?" said the other, huskily. "Why will you make a fool of yourself?" was the heated retort. "I tell you that you shall not go back to Moscow if I can prevent it. There's not a woman on this earth who is worth running so great a risk for. If she will not answer your letters, you must forget her, that is all." "You suggest an impossibility." "And you suggest a madness. What are you gazing at? Do you recognise anybody?" The other was looking across the roadway to where a tall, broad figure, in a massive fur-trimmed coat, was leisurely pacing the thronged pavement. Tweed repeated his question. "I--I don't know," replied Stefanovitch, indecisively. "The face of that tall fellow--I thought it was familiar--the light is so bad--and a cab came between----" "What, that fellow in the coat? How strange! I seem to know him, too. Even his back is familiar. Let me think. Where on earth did I meet--ah!--no, it's slipped me again. Yet I'm sure--almost sure--that I--got it, by thunder! The man's Vassilitch--Ivan Féodor Vassilitch, a countryman of yours; not a bad sort, but cold and hard--hard as sheet-iron. You have met him, perhaps?" "The name is not familiar to me."