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personal experience in the work of smuggling a Russian into his fatherland. She gave her friend some valuable suggestions, though he was several years her senior.

“When you are in the whirlpool, you mustn’t altogether forget us here,” she said, with a sigh. “You must write sometimes to me or to Vasily. I want to return also. You must manage that for me if you can.”

“With pleasure. And, by-the-by, where’s Vasily himself? Why haven’t you brought him here with you?”

“He wasn’t at the café. I sent him word to come here. Probably he is out—at the opera, I think. They are playing ‘Robert’ to-night. Otherwise he would have been here long ago.”

She put her hand into her pocket, and drew from it a large and heavy gold watch, of ancient make. It was a family possession she was very fond of, because it came to her from her father, a general of the times of Nicholas. The watch had been with her to Siberia, and now she had brought it into exile. It served occasionally as a timekeeper, but more often it lay peacefully—in her own or some friend’s interest—in the pawnbroker’s safe. These people lived in such close relations as practically to exclude the notion of private property. The fact that the watch was in the possession of its rightful owner was a conclusive sign that the small body of her former fellow-conspiratos were for the time rather in clover.

“Oh, how late it is!” said Lena. “Past twelve. I must run home, so as to be in good time for my lesson to-morrow.”

“And I, for my literary exploits,” observed Andrey.

“By the way,” said the girl, “you must arrange before you go for some of out people to carry on your work.”

“By all means. It will do very well for Vasily. With his modest habits, eighty francs a month will be amply sufficient for all his needs.”

“Certainly it will,” said Lena, with unnecessary fretfulness.

“And even to spare something for taking you to concerts or the opera!”

The girl blushed, though she was prepared for some sally of this kind. Andrey always teased her about her admirer. But she had the unconquerably ready blush of fair-skiined girls.

“Vasily is a man of rigid principles, anyhow. Not a sybarite like you,” she said, with a smile. “But, good-bye, I mustn't stop to quarrel with you.”