This steamer was due to sail at the same moment as the other, but a minute’s delay had proved our salvation.
“But where is it going?” she asked.
“I haven’t the dimmest idea,” I replied. “It is leaving Kronstadt, and that’s enough for us!”
“It may be going to another island in the Gulf of Finland,” she went on, “and then we are nicely trapped.”
That was a disquieting thought, so I left her in the cabin and went above to negotiate for tickets—and ascertain where we were going. At all events we were now steaming away from Kronstadt.
“What is the first stopping-place?” I asked casually of a deck-hand.
He looked queerly at me for a moment, but from my bad Russian he knew me to be a stranger.
“Orienbaum,” he answered.
Orienbaum is on the mainland, above Peterhof, and one hour by train from Petersburg, so by that we were reassured. In the cabin we were fortunately the only passengers, although many others were on the decks. Our plan was quickly arranged. In Kronstadt Pasha had worn a golf-cape over her jacket. She now planned to leave it on the steamer. She had in her pocket a veil of a different color and style from the one she had been wearing. With this outward change she was much altered. Then we separated. We would meet—casually—on the train. If any description had been wired to Orienbaum it would certainly not tally with her present appearance, and we would not be together when we left the boat.
At Orienbaum there were fifty minutes to wait for a train. Where my companion spent that time I don’t know. I went into a summer garden where there was music, and impatiently tried to listen to Russian songs badly sung.