"What money have you? Come here while I count it," one of the spies said to me. He slipped me one hundred roubles on the sly, before turning the rest over to the chief. I held it openly in my hand, too dazed to know what to do with it, till he whispered to me to hide it. "You may want it, later," he said. "Frau Pierce will go with us," the chief said, closing his portfolio; and I understood that the _revision_ was finished. "Frau G---- can stay here under room-arrest, with her little boy." He spoke to no one in particular, but addressed the room at large, his face impassive, and his voice without an intonation. The spies stood in the midst of the tumbled clothes, watching us silently, ominously. Janchu now crept up into Marie's lap again. As a matter of course, I went into the other room and changed into my traveling suit. "May I take my toilet things?" I asked the chief. "Ja." "You'd better make a bundle of bedclothes," the spy who had given me the money whispered to me. I rolled up two blankets and a pillow with his help. "I'm ready," I said. "May I send a few telegrams?" "Certainly, certainly." The chief's manner suddenly became extremely courteous. I wrote one to our Ambassador in Petrograd, one to Mr. Vopicka in Bucharest, one to the State Department in Washington, and one to Peter. I wrote Peter that I was delayed a few days. I was afraid that he might come on and be arrested, too. My hand did not tremble, though it struck me as very queer to see the words traced out on the paper--almost magical. My imagination was racing, and I could see myself already being driven into one of those baggage cars bound for Tomsk. "Keep your mind away from what is going to happen," I said to myself. "You will have time enough to think in prison. Things are as they are. You are going to walk out of this room, just the way you've done a hundred times. Are you different now from what you've always been? Keep your mind on things you know are real." I tried to move accurately, as though a false move would disturb the balance of things so that I would walk out of the room on my hands like an acrobat. Suddenly, the chief, who had been talking in a corner with the other man in uniform, wheeled about. "Frau Pierce may stay here under room-arrest. Good-day." He clicked his heels together and bowed slightly. His spies clustered about him, and they left the room. All at once my bones seemed to crumble and my flesh dissolve. I fell into a chair. Marie and I looked at each other. We began to laugh. "We mustn't get hysterical," we said, and kept on laughing. The room was so dark that we looked like two shadows. Panna Lolla had come after Janchu and taken him into Count S----'s room. We imagined the excited curiosity of the rest of the _pension_. "I'll wager that woman was a spy, after all." "But why--why should _we_ have a _revision_?" "Anyway, they couldn't have found much. We'll be set free in a few days," Marie said.