She paused and looked at him, half startled; then, with a curt, inarticulate cry of joy she hurried towards him.  Thus were given to them a few of those brief moments of complete happiness which are sometimes vouchsafed to human beings.  Which must assuredly be moments stolen from heaven; for angels are so chary with them, giving them to a few favored ones only once or twice in a whole lifetime, and, to the large majority of mankind, never at all.

“Why have you come?” asked Wanda.

“To see you,” replied this man of few words.

And the sound of his voice, the sight of his strong face, swept away all her troubles and anxieties; as if, with his greater physical strength, he had taken a burden which she could hardly lift, and carried it easily.  For he always seemed to know how to meet every emergency and face every trouble.  A minute ago she had been reflecting with relief that he was not in Poland, and now it seemed as if her heart must break had he been anywhere else.  She forgot for the moment all the dangers that surrounded them; the hopelessness of their love, the thousand reasons why they should not meet.  She forgot that a whole nation stood between them.  But it was only for a moment—­a moment borrowed from eternity.

“Is that the only reason?” she asked, remembering with a sort of shock that this world of glittering snow and still pine-trees was not their real world at all.

“Yes,” he answered.

“But you cannot stay in Poland!  You must go away again at once!  You do not know—­” And she stopped short, for their respective positions were such that they always arrived at a point where only silence was left to them.

“Oh, yes,” he answered with a short laugh.  “I know.  I am going away to-night—­to St. Petersburg.”

He did not explain that his immediate departure was not due to the fears that she had half expressed.

“I am so glad.”  She broke off, and looked at him with a little smile.  “I am so glad you are going away.”

She turned away from him with a sharp sigh.  For she had now a new anxiety, which, however, like Aaron’s rod, had swallowed all the rest.

“I would rather know that you were safe in England,” she said, “even if I were never to see you again.  But,” and she looked up at him with a sort of pride in her eyes—­that long-drawn pride of race which is strong to endure—­“but you must never be hampered by a thought of me.  I want you to be what you have always been.  Ah! you need not shake your head.  All men say the same of you—­they are afraid of you.”

She looked at him slowly, up and down.

“And I am not,” she added, with a sudden laugh.  For her happiness was real enough.  The best sort of happiness is rarely visible to the multitude.  It lies hidden in odd corners and quiet places; and the eager world which, presumably, is seeking it, hurries past and never recognizes it, but continues to mistake for it prosperity and riches, noise and laughter, even fame and mere cheap notoriety.