My second arrival at Kara was for me rather a joyous occasion. When I first came there I was the only woman doing hard labor; it was not fashionable yet to send women to mines. But now I found already sixteen or eighteen feminine comrades, and all of my second term I passed in the best society in the world. The annual term of convict labor consisted of eight months and my term flew past me unnoticed. Only one thing was aggravating, and that was to see how the frailer among us in health gradually sank and surely neared their graves, in the blossom of their lives. V--"I LANGUISHED FOR EIGHT YEARS IN A DEAD CITY" In 1885 I was again sent on the rights of a settler beyond the Baikal, in the dead city of Selenginsk, where I spent eight of the most sad years of my life. The naked steppe, the nailed-up cabins and the tireless trailing of the police became my lot. I was given neither the rights of a peasant nor a passport for travel in Siberia. And the heart burned with a passionate desire to escape, to renew the struggle with the enraged foe and take revenge for the innocently destroyed powers for good--the daughters and sons of our motherland. I sought, attempted, fought against obstacles, but all in vain. The steppe beyond the Baikal, the moundless Mongolian steppe, and, on the north, the inaccessible Baikal were the severe allies of the guard with which the authorities had surrounded me. There was no railroad nor steamship connection with the outside world. Right there then, in lifeless Selenginsk, I languished for eight whole years, languished like a hawk in a cage. All alone, ever yearning, I would go out into the steppe and in a loud voice pour my tempestuous heart, longing for freedom, into space. There was not a day on which I did not think of escaping, and I was always ready for any risk and peril, clinging to the littlest possibility to get away, but all in vain. No one, absolutely no one, promised any help. All those in whom it was possible to confide considered any attempt to escape foredoomed. My soul ached. And only the thought of my comrades--convicts who were sent to the Yakutsk huts, only the thought of their suffering made me forget my own. The eight empty years of my life in Selenginsk have remained all through my life a gray void, eating up the warm feelings of a warm heart. I filled my time with work, so as to be able to send my earnings to the dark prisons, snowbound wastes, to the hungry, forgotten comrades. I read, studied, in order to know how mankind lived, and how far or near was the possibility of transforming it into that "intelligent being" with whom it would be joyful to live. "Have patience," I would tell myself in the moments of keen grief; "be patient, endure to the end; you will get what you are waiting for."