“No,” admitted Miss Haldin, with some hesitation.  “Nothing definite.”

I understood well enough that all their conversations must have been referred mentally to that dead man who had brought them together.  That was unavoidable.  But it was in the living man that she was interested.  That was unavoidable too, I suppose.  And as I pushed my inquiries I discovered that he had disclosed himself to her as a by no means conventional revolutionist, contemptuous of catchwords, of theories, of men too.  I was rather pleased at that—­but I was a little puzzled.

“His mind goes forward, far ahead of the struggle,” Miss Haldin explained.  “Of course, he is an actual worker too,” she added.

“And do you understand him?” I inquired point-blank.

She hesitated again.  “Not altogether,” she murmured.

I perceived that he had fascinated her by an assumption of mysterious reserve.

“Do you know what I think?” she went on, breaking through her reserved, almost reluctant attitude:  “I think that he is observing, studying me, to discover whether I am worthy of his trust....”

“And that pleases you?”

She kept mysteriously silent for a moment.  Then with energy, but in a confidential tone—­

“I am convinced;” she declared, “that this extraordinary man is meditating some vast plan, some great undertaking; he is possessed by it—­he suffers from it—­and from being alone in the world.”

“And so he’s looking for helpers?” I commented, turning away my head.

Again there was a silence.

“Why not?” she said at last.

The dead brother, the dying mother, the foreign friend, had fallen into a distant background.  But, at the same time, Peter Ivanovitch was absolutely nowhere now.  And this thought consoled me.  Yet I saw the gigantic shadow of Russian life deepening around her like the darkness of an advancing night.  It would devour her presently.  I inquired after Mrs. Haldin—­that other victim of the deadly shade.

A remorseful uneasiness appeared in her frank eyes.  Mother seemed no worse, but if I only knew what strange fancies she had sometimes!  Then Miss Haldin, glancing at her watch, declared that she could not stay a moment longer, and with a hasty hand-shake ran off lightly.

Decidedly, Mr. Razumov was not to turn up that day.  Incomprehensible youth!

But less than an hour afterwards, while crossing the Place Mollard, I caught sight of him boarding a South Shore tramcar.

“He’s going to the Chateau Borel,” I thought.