"My brave Canadian, no time you lost in getting here," she said, coming down the stairs.
"How is it that you are here?" demanded Fenton in amazement.
"The Grand Duke's orders," replied Anna in low tones. "It was thought best that the princess should not be left without companionship. And then I was to keep a close watch on her. But this plan has not been the success. The princess has shut herself up and I have seen her but little."
"Where is she now?" asked Fenton, with all of a lover's eagerness.
Anna indicated a door leading off from the right of the hall. "You will find her there," she said. Then she placed a delaying hand on the arm. "Who is the extraordinary person of the very red hair? He made me a prisoner. He is the most rough, the most brutal—but——"
"Crane!" shouted Fenton. "I am going to leave Mademoiselle Petrowa in your charge. You apparently have amends to make to mademoiselle, who, by the way, has done a great deal for the Cause—more than any of us know. Could you manage to be polite for a while?"
CHAPTER XVII
THE RENUNCIATION
At times when the emotion runs high, considerations of a practical, artificial or conventional nature are often lost sight of; everything, in fact, recedes from the mind but the truly essential things. At such times one forgets caste, rejects pride and brushes aside the petty objections and restrictions that custom has hedged around us, and remembers only the deeper instincts that in reality shape one's course in life.
Olga was disturbed from the sad reverie into which she had fallen on the departure of Miridoff by hoarse shouts and the sound of running men without. When, brought to her feet by a knock at her door, she had thrown it open to find Fenton there, Olga forgot that she was a princess of the royal line, forgot that she had pledged herself to marry the Grand Duke that very night, forgot that life was sad, cruel, inexorable, forgot everything but that HE was there, that she was suddenly glad....