“I do hope he’s found my idol,” the girl was saying.

Dawson stepped into the light, and they turned and saw him.

“Why, here he is,” exclaimed Miss Paterson shrilly.

He raised his hat to the woman who stood at the entrance to the alley—­raised it as he would have raised it to a waitress in a bun-shop, and went over to the people from the second-class saloon.

“I found it,” he said, lifting the image forward, and brushing with his hand at the foulness of blood and hair upon it.  “But I was almost thinking I should miss the boat.”

II

THE SENSE OF CLIMAX

It was in the fall of the year that Truda Schottelius on tour came to that shabby city of Southern Russia.  Nowadays, the world remembers little of her besides her end, which stirred it as Truda Schottelius could always stir her audience; but in those days hers was a fame that had currency from Paris to Belgrade, and the art of drama was held her debtor.

It was soon after dawn that she looked from her window in the train, weary with twelve hours of traveling, and saw the city set against the pale sky, unreal and remote like a scene in a theatre, while about it the flat land stretched vacant and featureless.  The light was behind it, and it stood out in silhouette like a forced effect, and Truda, remarking it, frowned, for of late she found herself impatient of forced effects.  She was a pale, slender, brown-haired woman, with a small clear, pliant face, and some manner of languor in all her attitudes that lent them a slow grace of their own and did not at all impair the startling energy she could command for her work.  While she looked out at the city there came a tap at the door of her compartment, and her maid entered with tea.  Behind her, a little drawn in that early hour, came Truda’s manager, Monsieur Vaucher.

“Madame finds herself well?” he asked solicitously, but shivering somewhat.  “Madame is in the mood for further triumphs?”

Truda gave him a smile.  Monsieur Vaucher was a careful engineer of her successes, a withered little middle-aged Parisian, who had grown up in the mechanical service of great singers and actors.  There was not a tone in his voice, not a gesture in his repertory, that was not an affectation; and, with it all, she knew him for a man of sterling loyalty and a certain simplicity of heart.

“We are on the point of arriving,” went on Monsieur Vaucher.  “I come to tell Madame how the ground lies in this city.  It is, you see, a place vexed with various politics, an arena of trivialities.  In other words, Madame, the best place in the world for one who is—­shall we say?—­detached.”

Truda laughed, sipping her warm tea.

“Politics have never tempted me, my friend,” she replied.

Monsieur Vaucher bowed complaisantly.

“Your discretion is frequently perfect,” he said.  “And if I suggest that here is an occasion for a particular discretion, it is only because I have Madame’s interests at heart.  Now, the chief matters of dispute here are——­”