He leaned back in his chair with a sigh.  Of what value to him now were these carefully calculated suggestions about districts, centres, conveners, and what not?  And yet he had appeared deeply interested while his two visitors were present.  For the time being the old eagerness had stirred him; the pride he had taken in his own work.  But now that was passed from him; he had relinquished his stewardship; and as he absently gazed out into the black night before him, his thoughts drifted far away.  He was startled from his reverie by some one knocking at the door.  Immediately after Gathorne Edwards entered.

“Waters said I should find you alone,” said the tall, pale, blue-eyed student.  “I have come to you about Kirski.”

“Sit down.  Well?”

“It’s a bad business,” he said, taking a chair, and looking rather gloomy and uncomfortable.  “He has taken to drink badly.  I have been to him, talked to him, but I have no influence over him, apparently.  I thought perhaps you might do something with him.”

“Why, I cannot even speak to him!”

“Oh, he is accustomed to make much out of a few words; and I would go with you.”

“But what is the occasion of all this?  How can he have taken to drink in so short a time?”

“A man can drink himself into a pretty queer state in a very short time when he sets his mind to it,” Edwards said.  “He has given up his work altogether, and is steadily boozing away the little savings he had made.  He has gone back to his blood and kill, too; wants some one to go with him to murder that fellow out in Russia who first of all took his wife, and then beat him and set dogs on him.  The fact is, Calabressa’s cure has gone all to bits.”

“It is a pity.  The unfortunate wretch has had enough trouble.  But what is the cause of it?”

“It is rather difficult to explain,” said Edwards with some embarrassment.  “One can only guess, for his brain is muddled, and he maunders.  You know Calabressa’s flowery, poetical interpretation.  It was Miss Lind, in fact, who had worked a miracle.  Well, there was something in it.  She was kind to him, after he had been cuffed about Europe, and a sort of passion of gratitude took possession of him.  Then he was led to believe at that time that—­that he might be of service to her or her friends, and he gave up his projects of revenge altogether—­he was ready for any sacrifice—­and, in fact, there was a project—­” Edwards glanced at his companion; but Brand happened at that moment to be looking out of the window.

“Well, you see, all that fell through; and he had to come back to England disappointed; then there was no Calabressa to keep him up to his resolutions:  besides that, he found out—­how, I do not know—­that Miss Lind had left London.”

“Oh, he found that out?”

“Apparently.  And he says he is of no further use to anybody; and all he wants is to kill the man Michaieloff, and then make an end of himself.”