'I know the story already,' she said sadly.
'You know it! Have you correspondents in St. Petersburg too?'
'No. It's Sophia Antonovna. I have seen her just now. She sends you her greetings. She is going away to- morrow.'
He had lowered at last his fascinated glance; she too was looking down, and standing thus before each other in the glaring light, between the four bare walls, they seemed brought out from the confused immensity of the Eastern borders to be exposed cruelly to the observation of my Western eyes. And I observed them. There was nothing else to do. My existence seemed so utterly forgotten by these two that I dared not now make a movement. And I thought to myself that, of course, they had to come together, the sister and the friend of that dead man. The ideas, the hopes, the aspirations, the cause of Freedom, expressed in their common affection for Victor Haldin, the moral victim of autocracy,—all this must draw them to each other fatally. Her very ignorance and his loneliness to which he had alluded so strangely must work to that end. And, indeed, I saw that the work was done already. Of course. It was manifest that they must have been thinking of each other for a long time before they met. She had the letter from that beloved brother kindling her imagination by the severe praise attached to that one name; and for him to see that exceptional girl was enough. The only cause for surprise was his gloomy aloofness before her clearly expressed welcome. But he was young, and however austere and devoted to his revolutionary ideals, he was not blind. The period of reserve was over; he was coming forward in his own way. I could not mistake the significance of this late visit, for in what he had to say there was nothing urgent. The true cause dawned upon me: he had discovered that he needed her and she was moved by the same feeling. It was the second time that I saw them together, and I knew that next time they met I would not be there, either remembered or forgotten. I would have virtually ceased to exist for both these young people.
I made this discovery in a very few moments. Meantime, Natalia Haldin was telling Razumov briefly of our peregrinations from one end of Geneva to the other. While speaking she raised her hands above her head to untie her veil, and that movement displayed for an instant the seductive grace of her youthful figure, clad in the simplest of mourning. In the transparent shadow the hat rim threw on her face her grey eyes had an enticing lustre. Her voice, with its unfeminine yet exquisite timbre, was steady, and she spoke quickly, frank, unembarrassed. As she justified her action by the mental state of her mother, a spasm of pain marred the generously confiding harmony of her features. I perceived that with his downcast eyes he had the air of a man who is listening to a strain of music rather than to articulated speech. And in the same way, after she had ceased, he seemed to listen yet, motionless, as if under the spell of suggestive sound. He came to himself, muttering—
'Yes, yes. She has not shed a tear. She did not seem to hear what I was saying. I might have told her anything. She looked as if no longer belonging to this world.'
Miss Haldin gave signs of profound distress. Her voice faltered. 'You don't know how bad it has come to be. She expects now to see
Razumov raised his head sharply and attached on her a prolonged thoughtful glance.
'H'm. That's very possible,' he muttered in a peculiar tone, as if giving his opinion on a matter of fact. 'I wonder what....' He checked himself.
'That would be the end. Her mind shall be gone then, and her spirit will follow.'
Miss Haldin unclasped her hands and let them fall by her side.
'You think so?' he queried profoundly. Miss Haldin's lips were slightly parted. Something unexpected and unfathomable in that young man's character had fascinated her from the first. 'No! There's neither truth nor consolation to be got from the phantoms of the dead,' he added after a weighty pause. 'I might have told her something true; for instance, that your brother meant to save his life—to escape. There can be no doubt of that. But I did not.'
'You did not! But why?'
'I don't know. Other thoughts came into my head,' he answered. He seemed to me to be watching himself inwardly, as though he were trying to count his own heart-beats, while his eyes never for a moment left the face of the girl. 'You were not there,' he continued. 'I had made up my mind never to see you again.'
This seemed to take her breath away for a moment.
'You.... How is it possible?'
'You may well ask.... However, I think that I refrained from telling your mother from prudence. I might have assured her that in the last conversation he held as a free man he mentioned you both....'
'That last conversation was with you,' she struck in her deep, moving voice. 'Some day you must....'
'It was with me. Of you he said that you had trustful eyes. And why I have not been able to forget that phrase I don't know. It meant that there is in you no guile, no deception, no falsehood, no suspicion—nothing in your heart that could give you a conception of a living, acting, speaking lie, if ever it came in your way. That you are a predestined victim.... Ha! what a devilish suggestion!'
The convulsive, uncontrolled tone of the last words disclosed the precarious hold he had over himself. He was like a man defying his own dizziness in high places and tottering suddenly on the very edge of the precipice. Miss Haldin pressed her hand to her breast. The dropped black veil lay on the floor between them. Her movement steadied him. He looked intently on that hand till it descended slowly, and then raised again his eyes to her face. But he did not give her time to speak.
'No? You don't understand? Very well.' He had recovered his calm by a miracle of will. 'So you talked with Sophia Antonovna?'
'Yes. Sophia Antonovna told me....' Miss Haldin stopped, wonder growing in her wide eyes.
'H'm. That's the respectable enemy,' he muttered, as though he were alone.
'The tone of her references to you was extremely friendly,' remarked Miss Haldin, after waiting for a while.
'Is that your impression? And she the most intelligent of the lot, too. Things then are going as well as possible. Everything conspires to...Ah! these conspirators,' he said slowly, with an accent of scorn; 'they would get hold of you in no time! You know, Natalia Victorovna, I have the greatest difficulty in saving myself from the superstition of an active Providence. It's irresistible.... The alternative, of course, would be the personal Devil of our simple ancestors. But, if so, he has overdone it altogether—the old Father of Lies—our national patron—our domestic god,
