Truda interrupted him.  “Please!” she said.  “It does not matter at all.  And think!  Politics before breakfast.  I am surprised at you, Monsieur Vaucher.”

The little man shrugged.  “It is as Madame pleases,” he said.  “However, here we are at the station; I will go to make all ready.”

Truda had a wide experience of strange towns, and preserved yet some interest in making their acquaintance.  At that early hour the streets were sparsely peopled; the city was still at its toilet.  A swift carriage, manned by a bulky coachman of that spacious degree of fatness which is fashionable in Russia, bore her to her hotel along wide monotonous ways, flanked with dull buildings.  It was all very prosaic, very void of character; it did not at all engage her thoughts, and it was in weariness that she gained her rooms and disposed herself for a day of rest before the evening’s task.

Another woman might have gathered depression and the weakness of melancholy from this dullness of arrival, following on the dullness of travel; but a great actress is made on other lines.  A large audience was gathered in the theatre that night to make acquaintance with her, for her coming was an event of high importance.  Only one box was empty—­that of the Governor of the city, a Russian Prince whom Truda had met before; it was understood that he was away, and could not return till the following day.

But for the rest the house was full; its expectancy made itself felt like an atmosphere till the curtain went up and the play began to shape itself.  Audiences, like other assemblies of people, have their racial characteristics; it was the task of Truda to get the range, as it were—­to find the measure of their understanding; and before the first act was over she had their sympathy.  The rest was but the everyday routine of the stage, that grotesque craft wherein delicate emotions are handled like crowbars, and only the crude colors of life are visible.  It was a success—­even a great success, and nobody save Truda had an inkling that there was yet something to discover in the soul of a Russian audience.

At her coming forth, the square was thick with people under the lights, and those nearest the stage-door cheered her as she passed to her carriage.  But Truda was learned in the moods of crowds, and in her reception she detected a perfunctory note, as though the people who waved and shouted had turned from graver matters to notice her.  She saw, as the carriage dashed away, that the crowd was strongly leavened with uniforms of police; there was not time to see more before a corner was turned and the square cut off from view.  She sat back among her cushions with a shrug directed at those corners in her affairs which always shut off the real things of life.

The carriage went briskly towards her hotel, traversing those wide characterless streets which are typical of a Russian town.  The pavements were empty, the houses shuttered and dark; save for the broad back of the coachman perched before her, she sat in a solitude.  Thus it was that the sound which presently she heard moved her to quick attention, the noise of a child crying bitterly in the darkness.  She sat up and leaned aside to look along the bare street, and suddenly she called to the coachman to halt.  When he did so, the carriage was close to the place whence the cry came.