The knowledge which I have just stated was in my mind when, as I have said, I interrupted Miss Haldin.  I interrupted her with the cry of profound satisfaction—­

“So you never saw Madame de S—­, after all?”

Miss Haldin shook her head.  It was very satisfactory to me.  She had not seen Madame de S—!  That was excellent, excellent!  I welcomed the conviction that she would never know Madame de S—­ now.  I could not explain the reason of the conviction but by the knowledge that Miss Haldin was standing face to face with her brother’s wonderful friend.  I preferred him to Madame de S—­ as the companion and guide of that young girl, abandoned to her inexperience by the miserable end of her brother.  But, at any rate, that life now ended had been sincere, and perhaps its thoughts might have been lofty, its moral sufferings profound, its last act a true sacrifice.  It is not for us, the staid lovers calmed by the possession of a conquered liberty, to condemn without appeal the fierceness of thwarted desire.

I am not ashamed of the warmth of my regard for Miss Haldin.  It was, it must be admitted, an unselfish sentiment, being its own reward.  The late Victor Haldin—­in the light of that sentiment—­appeared to me not as a sinister conspirator, but as a pure enthusiast.  I did not wish indeed to judge him, but the very fact that he did not escape, that fact which brought so much trouble to both his mother and his sister, spoke to me in his favour.  Meantime, in my fear of seeing the girl surrender to the influence of the Chateau Borel revolutionary feminism, I was more than willing to put my trust in that friend of the late Victor Haldin.  He was nothing but a name, you will say.  Exactly!  A name!  And what’s more, the only name; the only name to be found in the correspondence between brother and sister.  The young man had turned up; they had come face to face, and, fortunately, without the direct interference of Madame de S—.  What will come of it? what will she tell me presently?  I was asking myself.

It was only natural that my thought should turn to the young man, the bearer of the only name uttered in all the dream-talk of a future to be brought about by a revolution.  And my thought took the shape of asking myself why this young man had not called upon these ladies.  He had been in Geneva for some days before Miss Haldin heard of him first in my presence from Peter Ivanovitch.  I regretted that last’s presence at their meeting.  I would rather have had it happen somewhere out of his spectacled sight.  But I supposed that, having both these young people there, he introduced them to each other.

I broke the silence by beginning a question on that point—­

“I suppose Peter Ivanovitch....”

Miss Haldin gave vent to her indignation.  Peter Ivanovitch directly he had got his answer from her had turned upon the dame de compagnie in a shameful manner.

“Turned upon her?” I wondered.  “What about?  For what reason?”