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360 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.

might count upon me. But it his misfortune to have fallen under some strange spell which we possess."

" Which you possess," said Ferrari.

" It is all the same," she said. " My mission, he claims, is his mission. I do not disguise from myself that he is mad ; but I find in his companionship a strange plea- sure."

" To confess which," said Ferrari, " is to confess that you are no longer true to the Brotherhood."

" True ! ! " she exclaimed. " Do you then impeach me ? In what respect am I untrue ? "

" You know," said Ferrari, " that you are the first 'woman I have trusted. You know that I have always been opposed to confiding our section of the Brotherhood to the constancy of a woman."

" In which you are," said the countess, " illogical. Was it not Sophie Provskaya who gave the signal for Rysakovis attack which carried off the emperor you most hated ? "

" But which," rejoined Ferrari, "you most condemn."

" I? " she exclaimed.

11 Have you not," he said, " changed our latest pro- gramme ? Have you not more than once declared ' we are conspirators, but not assassins ? ' Have you not repu- diated the term Nihilist, as it is applied to the party of revolution and reform in Europe? "

"For a foolish word," she said, " which does not in- terpret us or our ambition. Do I repudiate the rising we hope for? Do I not rejoice in the coming revolt of the army ? Do I not glory in the agrarian fires of the peasant ? Do I pause at an act of vengeance a life for a life ? Ask me to rival Sophie Provskaya, the risk of my own life for the annihilation of a thousand Petronovitches, one by one or in companies, and I am equal to the occasion ; but cast me for a dynamite plot, involving the lives of innocent people, and leading to no political result, but