“You will see now how you have been obeyed,” she said, and the words were scarcely out of her lips before a vehicle, driven at full gallop with a couple of mounted men close behind it, went dashing and clattering past us on the track of the automobile. “They are your police, monsieur, and have now a long ride before them.”
She referred to them with a shrug of utter contempt.
“We have a short distance to go in the opposite direction, and shall then find a carriage.”
Her coolness was admirable, and when we started to walk she could not have been more unconcerned if I had been merely seeing her home from a pink tea in New York.
We passed through two or three streets, meeting only a few loungers, and as we crossed a more important thoroughfare at the corner of which a man and a woman stood talking, my companion stopped and asked the woman where we could get a drosky. She spoke in broken Russian and added—
“We are Americans and have lost our way.”
“You will find none about here,” the man answered, and spoke in English.
“We are in a fix, it seems.”
“Which is the way to St. Mark’s Square?” I asked. “I know my way from there.”
He gave us minute directions and we walked on.