I took her hands in mine and held them tightly in silence for some moments, as I looked earnestly into those wonderfully brilliant eyes of hers.  She turned away laughing, a slight flush rising to her cheeks in her confusion.  Then she led me to a chair, and motioned me to be seated.

Ours was a silent meeting, but her gestures and the expression of her eyes were surely more eloquent than mere words.  I knew well what pleasure that re-encounter caused her—­equal pleasure with that it gave to me.

Until that moment I had never really loved.  I had admired and flirted with women.  What man has not?  Indeed, I had admired Muriel Leithcourt.  But never until now had I experienced in my heart the real flame of true burning affection.  The sweetness of her expression, the tender caress of those soft, tapering hands, the deep mysterious look in those magnificent eyes, and the incomparable grace of all her movements, combined to render her the most perfect woman I had ever met—­perfect in all, alas! save speech and hearing, of which, with such dastard wantonness, she had been deprived.

She touched her red lips with the tip of her forefinger, opened her hands, and shrugged her shoulders with a sad gesture of regret.  Then turning quickly to some paper on the little table at her side she wrote something with a gold pencil and handed to me.  It read—­

“Surely Providence has sent you here!  Mr. Woodroffe must have followed you from England.  He is my enemy.  You must take me from here and hide me.  They intend to send me into exile.  Have you ever been in Petersburg before?  Do you know anyone here?”

Then when I had read, she handed me her pencil and below I wrote—­

“I will do my best, dear friend.  I have been once in Petersburg.  But is it not best that we should escape at once from Russia?”

“Impossible at present,” she wrote.  “We should both be arrested at the frontier.  It would be best to go into hiding here in Petersburg.  I believed Woodroffe to be my friend, but I have found only this day that he is my enemy.  He knew that I was in Kajana, and was in Abo when he learned of my escape.  He went with two other men in search of us, and discovered us that night when we sought shelter at the wood-cutter’s hut.  Without making his presence known he waited outside until you were asleep, and then he came and looked in at my window.  At first I was alarmed, but quickly I saw that he was a friend.  He told me that the police were in the vicinity and intended to raid the hut, therefore I fled with him, first down to Tammerfors and then to Abo, and on here.  At that time I did not see the dastardly trap he had laid in order to get me out of the Baron’s clutches and wring from me my secret.  If I confess, he intends to give me up to the police, who will send me to the mines.”

“Does your secret concern him?” I asked in writing.

“Yes,” she wrote in response.  “It would be equally in his interests as well as those of Baron Oberg if I were sent to Saghalien and my identity effaced.  I am a Russian subject, as I have already told you, therefore with a Ministerial order against me I am in deadliest peril.”