And as they galloped along the roads, soft in the warm sun to the horses' feet, breathing in great draughts of good clean air, the past two months seemed to dwindle away to a mere speck in the far distance of her life, instead of being entangled with all the yesterdays of the dark season just over.
And Claudius--the man who made all this change in her life, who had opened a new future for her--how had he passed these months, she wondered?
To tell the truth, Claudius had been so desperately busy that the time had not seemed so long.

If he had been labouring in any other cause than hers it would have been insupportable.

But the constant feeling that all he did was for her, and to her advantage, and that at the same time she was ignorant of it all, gave him strength and courage.
He had been obliged to think much, to travel far, and to act promptly; and for his own satisfaction he had kept up the illusion that he was in Heidelberg by a cunning device.

He wrote constantly, and enclosed the letters to the old notary at the University, who, with Teutonic regularity, stamped and posted them.

And so it was that the date of the letter, written in St.Petersburg, was always two or three days older than that of the postmark.