lly, while I was profoundly
concerned at the nature of that exclamation.

"Dear me! Won't the truth do, then? I hoped you could have told them
something consoling. I am thinking of the poor mother now. Your Russia
_is_ a cruel country."

He moved a little in his chair.

"Yes," I repeated. "I thought you would have had something authentic to
tell."

The twitching of his lips before he spoke was curious.

"What if it is not worth telling?"

"Not worth--from what point of view? I don't understand."

"From every point of view."

I spoke with some asperity.

"I should think that anything which could explain the circumstances of
that midnight arrest...."

"Reported by a journalist for the amusement of the civilized Europe," he
broke in scornfully.

"Yes, reported.... But aren't they true? I can't make out your
attitude in this? Either the man is a hero to you, or..."

He approached his face with fiercely distended nostrils close to mine so
suddenly that I had the greatest difficulty in not starting back.

"You ask me! I suppose it amuses you, all this. Look here! I am a
worker. I studied. Yes, I studied very hard. There is intelligence
here." (He tapped his forehead with his finger-tips.) "Don't you think a
Russian may have sane ambitions? Yes--I had even prospects. Certainly! I
had. And now you see me here, abroad, everything gone, lost, sacrificed.
You see me here--and you ask! You see me, don't you?--sitting before
you."

He threw himself back violently. I kept outwardly calm.

"Yes, I see you here; and I assume you are here on account of the Haldin
affair?"

His manner changed.

"You call it the Haldin affair--do you?" he observed indifferently.

"I have no right to ask you anything," I said. "I wouldn't presume. But
in that case the mother and the sister of him who must be a hero in
your eyes cannot be indifferent to you. The girl is a frank and generous
creature, having the noblest--well--illusions. You will tell her
nothing--or you will tell her everything. But speaking now of the object
with which I've approached you first, we have to deal with the morbid
state of the mother. Perhaps something could be invented under your
authority as a cure for a distracted and suffering soul filled with
maternal affection."

His air of weary indifference was accentuated, I could not help
thinking, wilfully.

"Oh yes. Something might," he mumbled carelessly.

He put his hand over his mouth to conceal a ya