“What is it?  What is it?” called Truda, in soft Russian, and stepped down to the ground.  Only that shrill weeping answered her.

She picked her way to the pavement, where something lay huddled against the wall of the house, and the coachman, torpid on his box behind the fidgety horses, started at her sharp exclamation.

“Come here!” she called to him.  “Bring me one of the lamps.  Here is a horrible thing.  Be quick!”

He was nervous about leaving his horses, but Truda’s tone was compelling.  With gruntings and ponderously he obeyed, and the carriage-lamp shed its light over the matter in hand.  Under the wall, with one clutching hand outspread as though to grip at the stones of the pavement, lay the body of a woman, her face upturned and vacant.  And by it, still crying, crouched a child, whose hands were closed on the woman’s disordered dress.  Truda, startled to stillness, stood for a space of moments staring; the unconscious face on the ground seemed to look up to her with a manner of challenge, and the child, surprised by the light, paused in its weeping and cowered closer to the body.

“Murder?” said Truda hoarsely.  It was a question, and the coachman shuffled uneasily.

“I think,” he stammered, while the lamp swayed in his gauntleted hand and its light traveled about them in wild curves—­“I think, your Excellency, it is a Jew.”

“A Jew!” Truda stared at him.  “Yes.”  He bent to look closer at the dead woman, puffing with the exertion.  “Yes,” he repeated, “a Jew.  That is all, your Excellency.”

He seemed relieved at the discovery.  Truda was still staring at him, in a cold passion of horror.

“My God!” she breathed; then turned from him with a shudder and knelt beside the child.  “Go back to the carriage!  Wait!” she bade him, with her back turned, and he was fain to obey her with his best speed.  There, ere his conventional torpor claimed him again, he could hear her persuading and comforting the child in a voice of gentle murmurs, and at last she returned, carrying the child in her arms, and bade him drive on.  As he went, the murmuring voice still sounded, gentle and very caressing.

Truda paused to make no explanations at all when the hotel was reached, but passed through the hall and up to her own rooms with the frightened child in her arms.  But what the coachman had to say, when questioned, presently brought her manager knocking at her door.  He was hot and nervous, and Truda met him with the splendid hauteur she could assume upon occasion to quell interference with her actions.  Behind her, upon a couch, the child was lying wrapped in a shawl, looking on the pair of them and Truda’s hovering maid with great almond eyes set in a little smooth swarthy face.

“Madame, Madame!” cried M. Vaucher.  “What is this I hear?  How are we to get on in Russia—­in Russia of all places—­if you go in the face of public opinion like this?”