He writhed under the half-truths, the half-sincerities he was speaking. In marrying her his conscience absolved him of fortune seeking. It had been the pride of his Northumbrian blood to maintain his wife as she should be maintained, out of his earnings—this draft on her fortune for the jaunt he had made up a Tyneside mind to repay. Given the passport, the whole thing was as simple as signing a cheque. But no passports to be given, he had to lie. How else, in God’s name, to explain? “My dear,” said he, in answer to her natural question, “there’s one thing about myself I’ve not told you. It has seemed quite unimportant. In fact, I had practically forgotten it. But this is the story. During my last flight through Russia a friend, one of the old Russian nobility, gave me shelter. He was in hiding, dressed as a peasant. His wife and children had escaped the Revolution and were, he was assured, in England. He entrusted me with a thousand pounds in English bank-notes which he had hidden in a scapulary hanging round his neck, and which I was to give to his family on my arrival. I followed his example and hung the few paper roubles I had left, together with his money, round my neck. As you know, I was torpedoed. I was hauled out of the water in shirt and drawers, and landed penniless. The string of the scapulary had broken, and all the money was at the bottom of the North Sea. I went to every conceivable Russian agency in London to get information about the Vronsky family. There was no trace of them. I came to the conclusion that they had never landed in England, and to-day I found I was right. They hadn’t. They had disappeared off the face of the earth.” “To-day?” queried Olivia. “This morning. I had a letter from Vronsky forwarded by the publishers.” “Why didn’t you tell me?” cried Olivia. “I had an idea you weren’t quite yourself.” “I didn’t want to worry you without due reason,” he explained, “and I was upset. It was like a message from the dead. For, not having heard of him all this time, I concluded he had perished, like so many others, at the hands of the Bolsheviks. Anyhow, there he was alive in a little hotel in Bloomsbury. Of course, I had to go and rout him out.” “Naturally,” said Olivia. “Well, I found him. He had managed to escape, with the usual difficulties, and was now about to search Europe for his family.” “What a terrible quest,” said Olivia, with a shudder. “Yes. It’s awful, isn’t it?” replied Triona in a voice of deep feeling—already half beginning himself to believe in the genuineness of his story—“I spent a heart-rending day with him. He had expected to find his family in England.” “But you wrote to him——” “Of course. But how many letters to Russia reach their destination? Their letters, too, have miscarried or been seized. He hadn’t had news of them since they left Petrograd.”