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 him!” The veil dropped from her fingers and she clasped her hands in anguish.  “It shall end by her seeing him,” she cried.

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.”