“And did Sophia Antonovna agree with you?” I asked sceptically.

“She did not say anything except, ’It is good for you to believe in love.’  I should think she understood me.  Then she asked me if I hoped to see Mr. Razumov presently.  I said I trusted I could manage to bring him to see my mother this evening, as my mother had learned of his being here and was morbidly impatient to learn if he could tell us something of Victor.  He was the only friend of my brother we knew of, and a great intimate.  She said, ’Oh!  Your brother—­yes.  Please tell Mr. Razumov that I have made public the story which came to me from St. Petersburg.  It concerns your brother’s arrest,’ she added.  ’He was betrayed by a man of the people who has since hanged himself.  Mr. Razumov will explain it all to you.  I gave him the full information this afternoon.  And please tell Mr. Razumov that Sophia Antonovna sends him her greetings.  I am going away early in the morning—­far away.’”

And Miss Haldin added, after a moment of silence—­“I was so moved by what I heard so unexpectedly that I simply could not speak to you before....  A man of the people!  Oh, our poor people!”

She walked slowly, as if tired out suddenly.  Her head drooped; from the windows of a building with terraces and balconies came the banal sound of hotel music; before the low mean portals of the Casino two red posters blazed under the electric lamps, with a cheap provincial effect.—­and the emptiness of the quays, the desert aspect of the streets, had an air of hypocritical respectability and of inexpressible dreariness.

I had taken for granted she had obtained the address, and let myself be guided by her.  On the Mont Blanc bridge, where a few dark figures seemed lost in the wide and long perspective defined by the lights, she said—­

“It isn’t very far from our house.  I somehow thought it couldn’t be.  The address is Rue de Carouge.  I think it must be one of those big new houses for artisans.”

She took my arm confidingly, familiarly, and accelerated her pace.  There was something primitive in our proceedings.  We did not think of the resources of civilization.  A late tramcar overtook us; a row of fiacres stood by the railing of the gardens.  It never entered our heads to make use of these conveyances.  She was too hurried, perhaps, and as to myself—­well, she had taken my arm confidingly.  As we were ascending the easy incline of the Corraterie, all the shops shuttered and no light in any of the windows (as if all the mercenary population had fled at the end of the day), she said tentatively—­

“I could run in for a moment to have a look at mother.  It would not be much out of the way.”