BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 89
from heaven to tell one the subject. Besides you have been talking Siberia, the Ravelin, Russian tyranny, and the hopelessness of Nihilism for weeks past."
" I have been reading Stepniak, Dostoieffsky, Gogol, Lermontoff, Tolstoi, Tourgeneff, Kompert, Noble, Tikho- mirov and the rest ; and I seem to have realized in their revelations some of the vague dreams and suspicions of my youth. You forget that I was born in St. Petersburg."
" No, I forget nothing as a rule that is worth remember- ing ; and besides your mother, Lady Forsyth, does not permit one to forget your life in Russia, especially when she is entertaining some of the distinguished and other- wise exiles of the North I say ' and otherwise ' advised-
iy."
"My mother is too magnanimous," said the artist; " she takes everybody at their own estimate."
lt Our Evening Critic friend is engaged just now in summing up his latest question upon the forces of charac- ter, with illustrations of suppressed force and so on. But what two forces are there that are equal to industry and earnestness ? "
" You are my forces, Dick ; without your encouragement I should do nothing."
" Oh, yes, you would."
" If any other fellow said half the kind things you say to me I should turn from him as I would from a flatterer who had some purpose to serve in sweetening his words to please me. But if you say ever so much more than I de- serve, I know it comes out of your kind interest in me, and when you criticize me and you have not done that to-day I know you are right."
" You are a disagreeable and an ungrateful young vagabond if you doubt that I do not know that every word I say to you is the truth, so far as I am capable of speaking it ; and in spite of my journalistic career I have
