Surely I may be permitted to speak with her ?" "You wish to learn the truth, sir!" remarked the woman.

"I thought you were her lover--that you merely wished to see her once again." "No, I am not her lover," I answered.

"Indeed, we have never yet met.
But I am in search of the truth from her own lips." "That you will never learn," she said, in a hard, changed voice.
"Because there is a conspiracy to preserve the secret!" I cried.

"But I intend to solve the mystery, and for that reason I have traveled here from England." The woman with the lantern smiled sadly, as though amused by my impetuosity.
"You are on Russian soil now, m'sieur, not English," she remarked in her broken English.

"If your object were known, you would never be spared to return to your own land.