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.

"What is it? What is it?" called Truda, in soft Russian, and stepped
down to the ground. Only that shrill weeping answered her.