“And you, madame — do you love your step-daughter?” brutally inquired the reporter.

“Yes — sincerely,” replied Matrena Petrovna, withdrawing her hand from those of Rouletabille.

“And she — does she love you?”

“I believe so, monsieur, I believe so sincerely.  Yes, she loves me, and there is not any reason why she should not love me.  I believe - understand me thoroughly, because it comes from my heart — that we all here in this house love one another.  Our friends are old proved friends.  Boris has been orderly to my husband for a very long time.  We do not share any of his too-modern ideas, and there were many discussions on the duty of soldiers at the time of the massacres.  I reproached him with being as womanish as we were in going down on his knees to the general behind Natacha and me, when it became necessary to kill all those poor moujiks of Presnia.  It was not his role.  A soldier is a soldier.  My husband raised him roughly and ordered him, for his pains, to march at the head of the troops.  It was right.  What else could he do?  The general already had enough to fight against, with the whole revolution, with his conscience, with the natural pity in his heart of a brave man, and with the tears and insupportable moanings, at such a moment, of his daughter and his wife.  Boris understood and obeyed him, but, after the death of the poor students, he behaved again like a woman in composing those verses on the heroes of the barricades; don’t you think so?  Verses that Natacha and he learned by heart, working together, when they were surprised at it by the general.  There was a terrible scene.  It was before the next-to-the-last attack.  The general then had the use of both legs.  He stamped his feet and fairly shook the house.”

“Madame,” said Rouletabille, “a propos of the attacks, you must tell me about the third.”

As he said this, leaning toward her, Matrena Petrovna ejaculated a “Listen!” that made him rigid in the night with ear alert.  What had she heard?  For him, he had heard nothing.

“You hear nothing?” she whispered to him with an effort.  “A tick-tack?”

“No, I hear nothing.”

“You know — like the tick-tack of a clock.  Listen.”

“How can you hear the tick-tack?  I’ve noticed that no clocks are running here.”

“Don’t you understand?  It is so that we shall be able to hear the tick-tack better.”

“Oh, yes, I understand.  But I do not hear anything.”

“For myself, I think I hear the tick-tack all the time since the last attempt.  It haunts my ears, it is frightful, to say to one’s self:  There is clockwork somewhere, just about to reach the death-tick — and not to know where, not to know where!  When the police were here I made them all listen, and I was not sure even when they had all listened and said there was no tick-tack.  It is terrible to hear it in my ear any moment when I least expect it.  Tick-tack!  Tick-tack!  It is the blood beating in my ear, for instance, hard, as if it struck on a sounding-board.  Why, here are drops of perspiration on my hands!  Listen!”