While waiting for the fermentation, the brothers go to a dinner party, where the wild Spareen misbehaves and encounters a woman who may be a prospective mother to his children. The tale ends neatly without a major crisis and is one of Petrey's fluffier pieces, though some of the Vaylance's history is sketched in, namely a marriage at seventeen and the wife's subsequent death. These tid-bits give the reader brief glimpses of the wonderful stories we will never read. The Russian steppes of 1845 are torn by war. While Vaylance and Rimsky are giving aid to the wounded, the doctor is severely injured by cannon fire and is need of a blood transfusion.
Romance is inevitable between the emotionally scarred woman and the gentle Vaylance.
The healer attempts to bring Myrna back to 1845 with him but is thwarted by the ghost of his mother. In the dream tunnel, the spirit offers Myrna a wolf cub which changes into a demon. The modern woman is rejected because of her emotional repression. It is only after Myrna learns to love freely that she passes into the Vaylance's world. A happy ending which suggests further adventures for the three, Vaylance, Rimsky and Myrna.