What struck me next in the course of a week or so was the silence of these ladies.  I used to meet them walking in the public garden near the University.  They greeted me with their usual friendliness, but I could not help noticing their taciturnity.  By that time it was generally known that the assassin of M. de P—–­ had been caught, judged, and executed.  So much had been declared officially to the news agencies.  But for the world at large he remained anonymous.  The official secrecy had withheld his name from the public.  I really cannot imagine for what reason.

One day I saw Miss Haldin walking alone in the main valley of the Bastions under the naked trees.

“Mother is not very well,” she explained.

As Mrs. Haldin had, it seemed, never had a day’s illness in her life, this indisposition was disquieting.  It was nothing definite, too.

“I think she is fretting because we have not heard from my brother for rather a long time.”

“No news—­good news,” I said cheerfully, and we began to walk slowly side by side.

“Not in Russia,” she breathed out so low that I only just caught the words.  I looked at her with more attention.

“You too are anxious?”

She admitted after a moment of hesitation that she was.

“It is really such a long time since we heard....”

And before I could offer the usual banal suggestions she confided in me.

“Oh!  But it is much worse than that.  I wrote to a family we know in Petersburg.  They had not seen him for more than a month.  They thought he was already with us.  They were even offended a little that he should have left Petersburg without calling on them.  The husband of the lady went at once to his lodgings.  Victor had left there and they did not know his address.”

I remember her catching her breath rather pitifully.  Her brother had not been seen at lectures for a very long time either.  He only turned up now and then at the University gate to ask the porter for his letters.  And the gentleman friend was told that the student Haldin did not come to claim the last two letters for him.  But the police came to inquire if the student Haldin ever received any correspondence at the University and took them away.

“My two last letters,” she said.

We faced each other.  A few snow-flakes fluttered under the naked boughs.  The sky was dark.

“What do you think could have happened?” I asked.

Her shoulders moved slightly.

“One can never tell—­in Russia.”

I saw then the shadow of autocracy lying upon Russian lives in their submission or their revolt.  I saw it touch her handsome open face nestled in a fur collar and darken her clear eyes that shone upon me brilliantly grey in the murky light of a beclouded, inclement afternoon.

“Let us move on,” she said.  “It is cold standing—­to-day.”

She shuddered a little and stamped her little feet.  We moved briskly to the end of the alley and back to the great gates of the garden.