Exit a Dictator by E. Phillips Oppenheim

For a man to whom self-restraint had become almost a habit, Alexander appeared to be in an unusually restless and uneasy frame of mind from the moment he entered Anna Prestnoff's studio that evening. Anna herself; on the other hand, had found in the quality of silence a new form of strength. She refused to smoke, she listened to her visitor's somewhat staccato efforts at conversation with grave but uncritical attention. She waited until he had arrived at the threshold of the one portentous piece of news he had come to disclose and then she stopped him.

"I have seen Baron Gurdenoff to-day, Alexander," she told him, "and I have been to headquarters and talked with Professor Leonard. They neither of them told me anything, yet they were neither of them able to deny what has been my great fear during the last few days. You have definitely decided to accept this invitation from Russia."