She looked utterly bewildered for a moment; then, with a sort of despairing insight went straight to the point.

“The story, Kirylo Sidorovitch, the story!”

“There is no more to tell!” He made a movement forward, and she actually put her hand on his shoulder to push him away; but her strength failed her, and he kept his ground, though trembling in every limb.  “It ends here—­on this very spot.”  He pressed a denunciatory finger to his breast with force, and became perfectly still.

I ran forward, snatching up the chair, and was in time to catch hold of Miss Haldin and lower her down.  As she sank into it she swung half round on my arm, and remained averted from us both, drooping over the back.  He looked at her with an appalling expressionless tranquillity.  Incredulity, struggling with astonishment, anger, and disgust, deprived me for a time of the power of speech.  Then I turned on him, whispering from very rage—­

“This is monstrous.  What are you staying for?  Don’t let her catch sight of you again.  Go away!...”  He did not budge.  “Don’t you understand that your presence is intolerable—­even to me?  If there’s any sense of shame in you....”

Slowly his sullen eyes moved ill my direction.  “How did this old man come here?” he muttered, astounded.

Suddenly Miss Haldin sprang up from the chair, made a few steps, and tottered.  Forgetting my indignation, and even the man himself, I hurried to her assistance.  I took her by the arm, and she let me lead her into the drawing-room.  Away from the lamp, in the deeper dusk of the distant end, the profile of Mrs. Haldin, her hands, her whole figure had the stillness of a sombre painting.  Miss Haldin stopped, and pointed mournfully at the tragic immobility of her mother, who seemed to watch a beloved head lying in her lap.

That gesture had an unequalled force of expression, so far-reaching in its human distress that one could not believe that it pointed out merely the ruthless working of political institutions.  After assisting Miss Haldin to the sofa, I turned round to go back and shut the door Framed in the opening, in the searching glare of the white anteroom, my eyes fell on Razumov, still there, standing before the empty chair, as if rooted for ever to the spot of his atrocious confession.  A wonder came over me that the mysterious force which had torn it out of him had failed to destroy his life, to shatter his body.  It was there unscathed.  I stared at the broad line of his shoulders, his dark head, the amazing immobility of his limbs.  At his feet the veil dropped by Miss Haldin looked intensely black in the white crudity of the light.  He was gazing at it spell-bound.  Next moment, stooping with an incredible, savage swiftness, he snatched it up and pressed it to his face with both hands.  Something, extreme astonishment perhaps, dimmed my eyes, so that he seemed to vanish before he moved.

The slamming of the outer door restored my sight, and I went on contemplating the empty chair in the empty ante-room.  The meaning of what I had seen reached my mind with a staggering shock.  I seized Natalia Haldin by the shoulder.