Stella wondered a little wistfully what it must be like to talk to a really clever man. Her father was very clever, but he was not socially pliable, and he didn't exactly talk to Stella; he merely expressed in her presence conclusions at which he had arrived. It clarified his ideas, but it didn't do anything particular to Stella's.

Sir Richard Verny was taking trouble to talk to Marian; he bent his powerful head toward the girl and told her about Siberia. He knew Siberia well; he had often started from there upon important Arctic explorations. Marian wondered when he was going to propose. Siberia did as well as anything else till then. She knew he was going to propose; she didn't know anything at all about Siberia. She did not see Stella; it had not occurred to her that any one she knew could be sitting in the gallery.

The curtain rose again, and the last act began.

Chaliapine did not turn defeat into victory; no rabbit rose triumphantly, to satisfy the British public, out of a top-hat. Chaliapine led his people into a fire, and they were burned to death.

Some of them were frightened, and he had to comfort them, to hold them, and sustain them till the end. He had nothing at all to do it with, but he did sustain them. They all went into the flames, singing their disheartening music till the smoke covered them. Chaliapine sang longest, but there was nothing victorious in his last notes. They were very beautiful and final; then they weakened and were still.

The stillness went on for some time afterward. Everybody had been killed, and life had been so unendurable that they had faced death without much effort to avoid it. They could have avoided it if they had given up their faith. Their faith had vanished off the face of the earth, but they hadn't given it up.

Stella gave a long sigh of relief; she felt as if she had been saved from something abominable that might have happened.

Applause broke out all round them, a little uncertainly at first, because it was difficult for the audience to realize that the heavens weren't going to shoot open and do something definitely successful about it; but finally sustained and prolonged applause. Chaliapine had taken them all by storm. It was not the kind of storm that they were used to, but it was a storm.

"I love Russians," a lady exclaimed to Stella. "Such delightful people, don't you think, so full of color and what d' you call it?"

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