“If I could believe all you have said I still wouldn’t think of myself,” protested Miss Haldin.  “I would take liberty from any hand as a hungry man would snatch at a piece of bread.  The true progress must begin after.  And for that the right men shall be found.  They are already amongst us.  One comes upon them in their obscurity, unknown, preparing themselves....”

She spread out the letter she had kept in her hand all the time, and looking down at it—­

“Yes!  One comes upon such men!” she repeated, and then read out the words, “Unstained, lofty, and solitary existences.”

Folding up the letter, while I looked at her interrogatively, she explained—­

“These are the words which my brother applies to a young man he came to know in St. Petersburg.  An intimate friend, I suppose.  It must be.  His is the only name my brother mentions in all his correspondence with me.  Absolutely the only one, and—­would you believe it?—­the man is here.  He arrived recently in Geneva.”

“Have you seen him?” I inquired.  “But, of course; you must have seen him.”

“No!  No!  I haven’t!  I didn’t know he was here.  It’s Peter Ivanovitch himself who told me.  You have heard him yourself mentioning a new arrival from Petersburg....  Well, that is the man of ’unstained, lofty, and solitary existence.’  My brother’s friend!”

“Compromised politically, I suppose,” I remarked.

“I don’t know.  Yes.  It must be so.  Who knows!  Perhaps it was this very friendship with my brother which....  But no!  It is scarcely possible.  Really, I know nothing except what Peter Ivanovitch told me of him.  He has brought a letter of introduction from Father Zosim—­you know, the priest-democrat; you have heard of Father Zosim?”

“Oh yes.  The famous Father Zosim was staying here in Geneva for some two months about a year ago,” I said.  “When he left here he seems to have disappeared from the world.”

“It appears that he is at work in Russia again.  Somewhere in the centre,” Miss Haldin said, with animation.  “But please don’t mention that to any one—­don’t let it slip from you, because if it got into the papers it would be dangerous for him.”

“You are anxious, of course, to meet that friend of your brother?” I asked.

Miss Haldin put the letter into her pocket.  Her eyes looked beyond my shoulder at the door of her mother’s room.

“Not here,” she murmured.  “Not for the first time, at least.”

After a moment of silence I said good-bye, but Miss Haldin followed me into the ante-room, closing the door behind us carefully.

“I suppose you guess where I mean to go tomorrow?”

“You have made up your mind to call on Madame de S—.”

“Yes.  I am going to the Chateau Borel.  I must.”

“What do you expect to hear there?” I asked, in a low voice.

I wondered if she were not deluding herself with some impossible hope.  It was not that, however.