For all answer he moved his head imperceptibly.  The approval of Miss Haldin was expressed by her silence.  We walked slowly down the street, away from the town; the low garden walls of the modest villas doomed to demolition were overhung by the boughs of trees and masses of foliage, lighted from below by gas lamps.  The violent and monotonous noise of the icy waters of the Arve falling over a low dam swept towards us with a chilly draught of air across a great open space, where a double line of lamp-lights outlined a street as yet without houses.  But on the other shore, overhung by the awful blackness of the thunder-cloud, a solitary dim light seemed to watch us with a weary stare.  When we had strolled as far as the bridge, I said—­

“We had better get back....”

In the shop the sickly man was studying his smudgy newspaper, now spread out largely on the counter.  He just raised his head when I looked in and shook it negatively, pursing up his lips.  I rejoined Miss Haldin outside at once, and we moved off at a brisk pace.  She remarked that she would send Anna with a note the first thing in the morning.  I respected her taciturnity, silence being perhaps the best way to show my concern.

The semi-rural street we followed on our return changed gradually to the usual town thoroughfare, broad and deserted.  We did not meet four people altogether, and the way seemed interminable, because my companion’s natural anxiety had communicated itself sympathetically to me.  At last we turned into the Boulevard des Philosophes, more wide, more empty, more dead—­the very desolation of slumbering respectability.  At the sight of the two lighted windows, very conspicuous from afar, I had the mental vision of Mrs. Haldin in her armchair keeping a dreadful, tormenting vigil under the evil spell of an arbitrary rule:  a victim of tyranny and revolution, a sight at once cruel and absurd.

III

“You will come in for a moment?” said Natalia Haldin.

I demurred on account of the late hour.  “You know mother likes you so much,” she insisted.

“I will just come in to hear how your mother is.”

She said, as if to herself, “I don’t even know whether she will believe that I could not find Mr. Razumov, since she has taken it into her head that I am concealing something from her.  You may be able to persuade her....”

“Your mother may mistrust me too,” I observed.

“You!  Why?  What could you have to conceal from her?  You are not a Russian nor a conspirator.”

I felt profoundly my European remoteness, and said nothing, but I made up my mind to play my part of helpless spectator to the end.  The distant rolling of thunder in the valley of the Rhone was coming nearer to the sleeping town of prosaic virtues and universal hospitality.  We crossed the street opposite the great dark gateway, and Miss Haldin rang at the door of the apartment.  It was opened almost instantly, as if the elderly maid had been waiting in the ante-room for our return.  Her flat physiognomy had an air of satisfaction.  The gentleman was there, she declared, while closing the door.