"The frontier is their limit: and we must pass it."
"I have been out to-day to make the preparations for flight. I suppose I must go?"—she smiled a sad little note of interrogation at me—"and if so, the sooner the better. I have a disguise, and shall start to-night. My difficulty will be of course at the frontier. I am going to stop short of that by one station, and then as a peasant girl try to get over on foot. It will take a little longer: but it is the only chance."
"No, I have good news for you so far as that is concerned. Madame Tueski will get you a permit in some name or other and then you can cross in the train. Far better."
"You have seen her then to-day?" A shadow of her old feelings crossed Olga's face as she asked this.
"Yes, I have seen her, and she is eager now that you shall get out of the country."
She was very quickwitted and read my meaning instantly from my words and tone.
"Tell me everything. There is more bad news yet to be told. Has she guessed? ... Ah, I always feared that woman."
"Tell me, Olga, ought I to have any special mark on either of my arms. Any birth-mark, or anything of that sort?"
She went white instantly.
"I had forgotten. That wretched woman's initials were tattooed in small letters just there"—she put her finger on the place—"I saw it once and Alexis was wild with me. Has she seen your arm bare?"