black skirts of the frock-coat floating clear of his stout light grey legs. I confess to having looked upon these young people as the quarry of the 'heroic fugitive.' I had the notion that they would not be allowed to escape capture. But of that I said nothing to Miss Haldin, only as she still remained uncommunicative, I pressed her a little.
'Well—but you can tell me at least your impression.'
She turned her head to look at me, and turned away again.
'Impression?' she repeated slowly, almost dreamily; then in a quicker tone—
'He seems to be a man who has suffered more from his thoughts than from evil fortune.'
'From his thoughts, you say?'
'And that is natural enough in a Russian,' she took me up. 'In a young Russian; so many of them are unfit for action, and yet unable to rest.'
'And you think he is that sort of man?'
'No, I do not judge him. How could I, so suddenly? You asked for my impression—I explain my impression. I— I—don't know the world, nor yet the people in it; I have been too solitary—I am too young to trust my own opinions.'
'Trust your instinct,' I advised her. 'Most women trust to that, and make no worse mistakes than men. In this case you have your brother's letter to help you.'
She drew a deep breath like a light sigh. 'Unstained, lofty, and solitary existences,' she quoted as if to herself. But I caught the wistful murmur distinctly.
'High praise,' I whispered to her.
'The highest possible.'
'So high that, like the award of happiness, it is more fit to come only at the end of a life. But still no common or altogether unworthy personality could have suggested such a confident exaggeration of praise and...'
'Ah!' She interrupted me ardently. 'And if you had only known the heart from which that judgment has come!'
She ceased on that note, and for a space I reflected on the character of the words which I perceived very well must tip the scale of the girl's feelings in that young man's favour. They had not the sound of a casual utterance. Vague they were to my Western mind and to my Western sentiment, but I could not forget that, standing by Miss Haldin's side, I was like a traveller in a strange country. It had also become clear to me that Miss Haldin was unwilling to enter into the details of the only material part of their visit to the Chateau Borel. But I was not hurt. Somehow I didn't feel it to be a want of confidence. It was some other difficulty—a difficulty I could not resent. And it was without the slightest resentment that I said—
'Very well. But on that high ground, which I will not dispute, you, like anyone else in such circumstances, you must have made for yourself a representation of that exceptional friend, a mental image of him, and—please tell me—you were not disappointed?'
'What do you mean? His personal appearance?'
'I don't mean precisely his good looks, or otherwise.'
We turned at the end of the alley and made a few steps without looking at each other.
'His appearance is not ordinary,' said Miss Haldin at last.
'No, I should have thought not—from the little you've said of your first impression. After all, one has to fall back on that word. Impression! What I mean is that something indescribable which is likely to mark a 'not ordinary' person.'
I perceived that she was not listening. There was no mistaking her expression; and once more I had the sense of being out of it—not because of my age, which at any rate could draw inferences—but altogether out of it, on another plane whence I could only watch her from afar. And so ceasing to speak I watched her stepping out by my side.
'No,' she exclaimed suddenly, 'I could not have been disappointed with a man of such strong feeling.'
'Aha! Strong feeling,' I muttered, thinking to myself censoriously: like this, at once, all in a moment!
'What did you say?' inquired Miss Haldin innocently.
'Oh, nothing. I beg your pardon. Strong feeling. I am not surprised.'
'And you don't know how abruptly I behaved to him!' she cried remorsefully.
I suppose I must have appeared surprised, for, looking at me with a still more heightened colour, she said she was ashamed to admit that she had not been sufficiently collected; she had failed to control her words and actions as the situation demanded. She lost the fortitude worthy of both the men, the dead and the living; the fortitude which should have been the note of the meeting of Victor Haldin's sister with Victor Haldin's only known friend. He was looking at her keenly, but said nothing, and she was—she confessed—painfully affected by his want of comprehension. All she could say was: 'You are Mr. Razumov.' A slight frown passed over his forehead. After a short, watchful pause, he made a little bow of assent, and waited.
At the thought that she had before her the man so highly regarded by her brother, the man who had known his value, spoken to him, understood him, had listened to his confidences, perhaps had encouraged him—her lips trembled, her eyes ran full of tears; she put out her hand, made a step towards him impulsively, saying with an effort to restrain her emotion, 'Can't you guess who I am?' He did not take the proffered hand. He even recoiled a pace, and Miss Haldin imagined that he was unpleasantly affected. Miss Haldin excused him, directing her displeasure at herself. She had behaved unworthily, like an emotional French girl. A manifestation of that kind could not be welcomed by a man of stern, self-contained character.
He must have been stern indeed, or perhaps very timid with women, not to respond in a more human way to the advances of a girl like Nathalie Haldin—I thought to myself. Those lofty and solitary existences (I remembered the words suddenly) make a young man shy and an old man savage—often.
'Well,' I encouraged Miss Haldin to proceed.
