,--everybody seems to
be called Paul!" Therewith he turned away, and began to walk up and down
before the house, lighting a cigar, and smoking savagely in his
annoyance with things in general.

He was thinking that if it had been so easy for Madame Patoff to throw
herself over the balcony, just when he was not looking, it was after all
not so very improbable that Alexander might have slipped away from his
brother in the dark. The coincidence of the two cases was remarkable.
As for Madame Patoff, he did not doubt for a moment that she had
intended to commit suicide by throwing herself down the precipice.
According to his theory, all her calmness of yesterday and this morning,
succeeding the great excitement of her meeting with Paul, proved that
she had been quietly meditating death. She had escaped. But had her mind
escaped the suicide she had attempted on her body? In its effects, her
anger against Paul and her fixed idea concerning him were as nothing
when compared with the terrible shock she had experienced that morning.
It was absolutely impossible to predict what would occur: whether she
would recover her faculties, or remain apathetic for the rest of her
life. She was a nervous, sensitive, and overstrung woman at all times,
and would suffer far more under a sudden and violent strain than a
duller nature could. The view she took in regard to Alexander's
disappearance proved that her faculties were not evenly balanced. Of
course the story was a very queer one, and Russians are queer people, as
the professor said to himself. It was not going beyond the bounds of
possibility to suppose that Paul might have murdered his brother, but
Cutter would have expected that Madame Patoff would be the last person
to suspect it, and especially to say it aloud. The way she had raved
against Paul on more than one occasion sufficiently showed that she
seized at false conclusions, like a person of unsound mind. Alexander
had resembled her, too, and had always acted like an irritable,
beautiful, spoiled child. There was a distinct streak of "queerness," as
Cutter expressed it, in the family. Probably Paul had inherited it in a
different way. His conduct at Teinach, after leaving his mother, had
been strange. He had shown no sorrow, scarcely any annoyance, indeed,
and during their dinner had seemed thoroughly at his ease.
Scientifically speaking, the professor regretted the accident of the
morning. Madame Patoff had been a very interesti