ted to see me in this garden. I could not come
before. I was hindered. And even to-day, you see...late."

She still held his hand.

"I can, at any rate, thank you for not dismissing me from your mind as
a weak, emotional girl. No doubt I want sustaining. I am very ignorant.
But I can be trusted. Indeed I can!"

"You are ignorant," he repeated thoughtfully. He had raised his head,
and was looking straight into her face now, while she held his hand.
They stood like this for a long moment. She released his hand.

"Yes. You did come late. It was good of you to come on the chance of
me having loitered beyond my time. I was talking with this good friend
here. I was talking of you. Yes, Kirylo Sidorovitch, of you. He was with
me when I first heard of your being here in Geneva. He can tell you
what comfort it was to my bewildered spirit to hear that news. He knew
I meant to seek you out. It was the only object of my accepting the
invitation of Peter Ivanovitch....

"Peter Ivanovitch talked to you of me," he interrupted, in that
wavering, hoarse voice which suggested a horribly dry throat.

"Very little. Just told me your name, and that you had arrived here. Why
should I have asked for more? What could he have told me that I did not
know already from my brother's letter? Three lines! And how much they
meant to me! I will show them to you one day, Kirylo Sidorovitch. But
now I must go. The first talk between us cannot be a matter of five
minutes, so we had better not begin...."

I had been standing a little aside, seeing them both in profile. At that
moment it occurred to me that Mr. Razumov's face was older than his age.

"If mother"--the girl had turned suddenly to me, "were to wake up in my
absence (so much longer than usual) she would perhaps question me. She
seems to miss me more, you know, of late. She would want to know what
delayed me--and, you see, it would be painful for me to dissemble before
her."

I understood the point very well. For the same reason she checked what
seemed to be on Mr. Razumov's part a movement to accompany her.

"No! No! I go alone, but meet me here as soon as possible." Then to me
in a lower, significant tone--

"Mother may be sitting at the window at this moment, looking down
the street. She must not know anything of Mr. Razumov's presence here
till--till something is arranged." She paused before she added a little
louder, but still speaking to me, "Mr. Razumov does not quite understa