“Yes, yes, little one; you are wiser than King Solomon.  And what will I do with the phial of poison?”

“Bring it to me.”

“Right away.”

She went for it and returned five minutes later.

“He is still asleep.  I have put the glass on the table, out of his reach.  He will have to call me.”

“Very good.  Then push the door to, close it; we have to talk things over.”

“But if someone goes back up the servants’ staircase?”

“Be easy about that.  They think the general is poisoned already.  It is the first care-free moment I have been able to enjoy in this house.”

“When will you stop making me shake with horror, little demon!  You keep your secret well, I must say.  The general is sleeping better than if he really were poisoned.  But what shall we do about Natacha?  I dare ask you that — you and you alone.”

“Nothing at all.”

“How — nothing?”

“We will watch her...”

“Ah, yes, yes.”

“Still, Matrena, you let me watch her by myself.”

“Yes, yes, I promise you.  I will not pay any attention to her.  That is promised.  That is promised.  Do as you please.  Why, just now, when I spoke of the Nihilists to you, did you say, ’If it were only that!’?  You believe, then, that she is not a Nihilist?  She reads such things — things like on the barricades...”

“Madame, madame, you think of nothing but Natacha.  You have promised me not to watch her; promise me not to think about her.”

“Why, why did you say, ’If it was only that!’?”

“Because, if there were only Nihilists in your affair, dear madame, it would be too simple, or, rather, it would have been more simple.  Can you possibly believe, madame, that simply a Nihilist, a Nihilist who was only a Nihilist, would take pains that his bomb exploded from a vase of flowers? — that it would have mattered where, so long as it overwhelmed the general?  Do you imagine that the bomb would have had less effect behind the door than in front of it?  And the little cavity under the floor, do you believe that a genuine revolutionary, such as you have here in Russia, would amuse himself by penetrating to the villa only to draw out two nails from a board, when one happens to give him time between two visits to the dining-room?  Do you suppose that a revolutionary who wished to avenge the dead of Moscow and who could succeed in getting so far as the door behind which General Trebassof slept would amuse himself by making a little hole with a pin in order to draw back the bolt and amuse himself by pouring poison into a glass?  Why, in such a case, he would have thrown his bomb outright, whether it blew him up along with the villa, or he was arrested on the spot, or had to submit to the martyrdom of the dungeons in the Fortress of SS.  Peter and Paul, or be hung at Schlusselburg.  Isn’t that what always happens?  That is the way he would