Mrs. Haldin turned her head away and looked out of the window for a time, with that new, sombre, extinct gaze of her sunken eyes which so completely made another woman of her.

“That Englishman, this correspondent,” she addressed me suddenly, “do you think it is possible that he knew my son?”

To this strange question I could only say that it was possible of course.  She saw my surprise.

“If one knew what sort of man he was one could perhaps write to him,” she murmured.

“Mother thinks,” explained Miss Haldin, standing between us, with one hand resting on the back of my chair, “that my poor brother perhaps did not try to save himself.”

I looked up at Miss Haldin in sympathetic consternation, but Miss Haldin was looking down calmly at her mother.  The latter said—­

“We do not know the address of any of his friends.  Indeed, we know nothing of his Petersburg comrades.  He had a multitude of young friends, only he never spoke much of them.  One could guess that they were his disciples and that they idolized him.  But he was so modest.  One would think that with so many devoted....”

She averted her head again and looked down the Boulevard des Philosophes, a singularly arid and dusty thoroughfare, where nothing could be seen at the moment but two dogs, a little girl in a pinafore hopping on one leg, and in the distance a workman wheeling a bicycle.

“Even amongst the Apostles of Christ there was found a Judas,” she whispered as if to herself, but with the evident intention to be heard by me.

The Russian visitors assembled in little knots, conversed amongst themselves meantime, in low murmurs, and with brief glances in our direction.  It was a great contrast to the usual loud volubility of these gatherings.  Miss Haldin followed me into the ante-room.

“People will come,” she said.  “We cannot shut the door in their faces.”

While I was putting on my overcoat she began to talk to me of her mother.  Poor Mrs. Haldin was fretting after more news.  She wanted to go on hearing about her unfortunate son.  She could not make up her mind to abandon him quietly to the dumb unknown.  She would persist in pursuing him in there through the long days of motionless silence face to face with the empty Boulevard des Philosophes.  She could not understand why he had not escaped—­as so many other revolutionists and conspirators had managed to escape in other instances of that kind.  It was really inconceivable that the means of secret revolutionary organisations should have failed so inexcusably to preserve her son.  But in reality the inconceivable that staggered her mind was nothing but the cruel audacity of Death passing over her head to strike at that young and precious heart.

Miss Haldin mechanically, with an absorbed look, handed me my hat.  I understood from her that the poor woman was possessed by the sombre and simple idea that her son must have perished because he did not want to be saved.  It could not have been that he despaired of his country’s future.  That was impossible.  Was it possible that his mother and sister had not known how to merit his confidence; and that, after having done what he was compelled to do, his spirit became crushed by an intolerable doubt, his mind distracted by a sudden mistrust.