"If I only could--but there is something that passes my understanding." The look of pain faded from his face and gave way to a bright smile, so bright, so rare, that it restored in the magic of an instant the freshness of early youth to the weary mask of sorrow.

Then he covered his eyes with his hands as though searching his memory for something he could not find.
"What is it ?" he asked, after a short pause and looking suddenly at Vjera.
"It is something I ought to remember and yet something I have quite forgotten.

Help me, Vjera, tell me what you are thinking of, and I will explain it all." "I was thinking of this day a week ago," said Vjera, and a little sob escaped her as she quickly looked away.
"A week ago?
Let me see--what happened a week ago?
But why should I ask?
Nothing ever happens to me, nothing until now! And now, oh Vjera, it is you who do not understand, it is you who do not know, who cannot guess." As if he had forgotten everything else in the sudden realisation of his return to liberty and fortune, he began to speak quickly and excitedly in a tone louder and clearer than that of his ordinary voice.
"No," he cried, "you can never guess what this change is to me.

You can never know what I enjoy in the thought of being myself again, you cannot understand what it is to have been rich and great, and to be poor and wretched and to regain wealth and dignity again by the stroke of a pen in the vibration of a second.

And yet it is true, all true, I tell you, to-day, at last, after so much waiting.