However, it is not becoming for an obscure teacher of languages to criticize a “heroic fugitive” of worldwide celebrity.  I was aware from hearsay that he was an industrious busy-body, hunting up his compatriots in hotels, in private lodgings, and—­I was told—­conferring upon them the honour of his notice in public gardens when a suitable opening presented itself.  I was under the impression that after a visit or two, several months before, he had given up the ladies Haldin—­no doubt reluctantly, for there could be no question of his being a determined person.  It was perhaps to be expected that he should reappear again on this terrible occasion, as a Russian and a revolutionist, to say the right thing, to strike the true, perhaps a comforting, note.  But I did not like to see him sitting there.  I trust that an unbecoming jealousy of my privileged position had nothing to do with it.  I made no claim to a special standing for my silent friendship.  Removed by the difference of age and nationality as if into the sphere of another existence, I produced, even upon myself, the effect of a dumb helpless ghost, of an anxious immaterial thing that could only hover about without the power to protect or guide by as much as a whisper.  Since Miss Haldin with her sure instinct had refrained from introducing me to the burly celebrity, I would have retired quietly and returned later on, had I not met a peculiar expression in her eyes which I interpreted as a request to stay, with the view, perhaps, of shortening an unwelcome visit.

He picked up his hat, but only to deposit it on his knees.

“We shall meet again, Natalia Victorovna.  To-day I have called only to mark those feelings towards your honoured mother and yourself, the nature of which you cannot doubt.  I needed no urging, but Eleanor—­Madame de S—­ herself has in a way sent me.  She extends to you the hand of feminine fellowship.  There is positively in all the range of human sentiments no joy and no sorrow that woman cannot understand, elevate, and spiritualize by her interpretation.  That young man newly arrived from St. Petersburg, I have mentioned to you, is already under the charm.”

At this point Miss Haldin got up abruptly.  I was glad.  He did not evidently expect anything so decisive and, at first, throwing his head back, he tilted up his dark glasses with bland curiosity.  At last, recollecting himself, he stood up hastily, seizing his hat off his knees with great adroitness.

“How is it, Natalia Victorovna, that you have kept aloof so long, from what after all is—­let disparaging tongues say what they like—­a unique centre of intellectual freedom and of effort to shape a high conception of our future?  In the case of your honoured mother I understand in a measure.  At her age new ideas—­new faces are not perhaps....  But you!  Was it mistrust—­or indifference?  You must come out of your reserve.  We Russians have no right to be reserved with each