“And had he?” I interrupted.

“I don’t know.  How could it have been otherwise?  And yet....  But what does that matter?  I stood there before him, near enough to be touched and surely not looking like an impostor.  All I know is, that he put out both his hands then to me, I may say flung them out at me, with the greatest readiness and warmth, and that I seized and pressed them, feeling that I was finding again a little of what I thought was lost to me for ever, with the loss of my brother—­some of that hope, inspiration, and support which I used to get from my dear dead....”

I understood quite well what she meant.  We strolled on slowly.  I refrained from looking at her.  And it was as if answering my own thoughts that I murmured—­

“No doubt it was a great friendship—­as you say.  And that young man ended by welcoming your name, so to speak, with both hands.  After that, of course, you would understand each other.  Yes, you would understand each other quickly.”

It was a moment before I heard her voice.

“Mr. Razumov seems to be a man of few words.  A reserved man—­even when he is strongly moved.”

Unable to forget—–­or even to forgive—­the bass-toned expansiveness of Peter Ivanovitch, the Archpatron of revolutionary parties, I said that I took this for a favourable trait of character.  It was associated with sincerity—­in my mind.

“And, besides, we had not much time,” she added.

“No, you would not have, of course.”  My suspicion and even dread of the feminist and his Egeria was so ineradicable that I could not help asking with real anxiety, which I made smiling—­

“But you escaped all right?”

She understood me, and smiled too, at my uneasiness.

“Oh yes!  I escaped, if you like to call it that.  I walked away quickly.  There was no need to run.  I am neither frightened nor yet fascinated, like that poor woman who received me so strangely.”

“And Mr.—­Mr. Razumov...?”

“He remained there, of course.  I suppose he went into the house after I left him.  You remember that he came here strongly recommended to Peter Ivanovitch—­possibly entrusted with important messages for him.”

“Ah yes!  From that priest who...”

“Father Zosim—­yes.  Or from others, perhaps.”

“You left him, then.  But have you seen him since, may I ask?”

For some time Miss Haldin made no answer to this very direct question, then—­

“I have been expecting to see him here to-day,” she said quietly.

“You have!  Do you meet, then, in this garden?  In that case I had better leave you at once.”

“No, why leave me?  And we don’t meet in this garden.  I have not seen Mr. Razumov since that first time.  Not once.  But I have been expecting him....”

She paused.  I wondered to myself why that young revolutionist should show so little alacrity.