“To tell what I have heard myself only to-day—­to-day....”

Through the door he had not closed I had a view of the drawing-room.  It was lighted only by a shaded lamp—­Mrs. Haldin’s eyes could not support either gas or electricity.  It was a comparatively big room, and in contrast with the strongly lighted ante-room its length was lost in semi-transparent gloom backed by heavy shadows; and on that ground I saw the motionless figure of Mrs. Haldin, inclined slightly forward, with a pale hand resting on the arm of the chair.

She did not move.  With the window before her she had no longer that attitude suggesting expectation.  The blind was down; and outside there was only the night sky harbouring a thunder-cloud, and the town indifferent and hospitable in its cold, almost scornful, toleration—­a respectable town of refuge to which all these sorrows and hopes were nothing.  Her white head was bowed.

The thought that the real drama of autocracy is not played on the great stage of politics came to me as, fated to be a spectator, I had this other glimpse behind the scenes, something more profound than the words and gestures of the public play.  I had the certitude that this mother, refused in her heart to give her son up after all.  It was more than Rachel’s inconsolable mourning, it was something deeper, more inaccessible in its frightful tranquillity.  Lost in the ill-defined mass of the high-backed chair, her white, inclined profile suggested the contemplation of something in her lap, as though a beloved head were resting there.

I had this glimpse behind the scenes, and then Miss Haldin, passing by the young man, shut the door.  It was not done without hesitation.  For a moment I thought that she would go to her mother, but she sent in only an anxious glance.  Perhaps if Mrs. Haldin had moved...but no.  There was in the immobility of that bloodless face the dreadful aloofness of suffering without remedy.

Meantime the young man kept his eyes fixed on the floor.  The thought that he would have to repeat the story he had told already was intolerable to him.  He had expected to find the two women together.  And then, he had said to himself, it would be over for all time—­for all time.  “It’s lucky I don’t believe in another world,” he had thought cynically.

Alone in his room after having posted his secret letter, he had regained a certain measure of composure by writing in his secret diary.  He was aware of the danger of that strange self-indulgence.  He alludes to it himself, but he could not refrain.  It calmed him—­it reconciled him to his existence.  He sat there scribbling by the light of a solitary candle, till it occurred to him that having heard the explanation of Haldin’s arrest, as put forward by Sophia Antonovna, it behoved him to tell these ladies himself.  They were certain to hear the tale through some other channel, and then his abstention would look strange, not only to the mother and sister of Haldin, but to other people also.  Having come to this conclusion, he did not discover in himself any marked reluctance to face the necessity, and very soon an anxiety to be done with it began to torment him.  He looked at his watch.  No; it was not absolutely too late.