ng, studying me,
to discover whether I am worthy of his trust...."

"And that pleases you?"

She kept mysteriously silent for a moment. Then with energy, but in a
confidential tone--

"I am convinced;" she declared, "that this extraordinary man is
meditating some vast plan, some great undertaking; he is possessed by
it--he suffers from it--and from being alone in the world."

"And so he's looking for helpers?" I commented, turning away my head.

Again there was a silence.

"Why not?" she said at last.

The dead brother, the dying mother, the foreign friend, had fallen
into a distant background. But, at the same time, Peter Ivanovitch was
absolutely nowhere now. And this thought consoled me. Yet I saw the
gigantic shadow of Russian life deepening around her like the darkness
of an advancing night. It would devour her presently. I inquired after
Mrs. Haldin--that other victim of the deadly shade.

A remorseful uneasiness appeared in her frank eyes. Mother seemed no
worse, but if I only knew what strange fancies she had sometimes! Then
Miss Haldin, glancing at her watch, declared that she could not stay a
moment longer, and with a hasty hand-shake ran off lightly.

Decidedly, Mr. Razumov was not to turn up that day. Incomprehensible
youth!

But less than an hour afterwards, while crossing the Place Mollard, I
caught sight of him boarding a South Shore tramcar.

"He's going to the Chateau Borel," I thought.

After depositing Razumov at the gates of the Chateau Borel, some half
a mile or so from the town, the car continued its journey between two
straight lines of shady trees. Across the roadway in the sunshine a
short wooden pier jutted into the shallow pale water, which farther out
had an intense blue tint contrasting unpleasantly with the green orderly
slopes on the opposite shore. The whole view, with the harbour jetties
of white stone underlining lividly the dark front of the town to
the left, and the expanding space of water to the right with jutting
promontories of no particular character, had the uninspiring, glittering
quality of a very fresh oleograph. Razumov turned his back on it with
contempt. He thought it odious--oppressively odious--in its unsuggestive
finish: the very perfection of mediocrity attained at last after
centuries of toil and culture. And turning his back on it, he faced the
entrance to the grounds of the Chateau Borel.

The bars of the central way and the wrought-iron arch betwe