at its foot
as if the earth had opened to swallow them up.

"Oh, well, they have just come from America." The woman in the crimson
blouse shrugged her shoulders too a little before making that statement.
"The time is drawing near," she interjected, as if speaking to herself.
"I did not tell them who you were. Yakovlitch would have wanted to
embrace you."

"Is that he with the wisp of hair hanging from his chin, in the long
coat?"

"You've guessed aright. That's Yakovlitch."

"And they could not find their way here from the station without you
coming on purpose from Zurich to show it to them? Verily, without women
we can do nothing. So it stands written, and apparently so it is."

He was conscious of an immense lassitude under his effort to be
sarcastic. And he could see that she had detected it with those steady,
brilliant black eyes.

"What is the matter with you?"

"I don't know. Nothing. I've had a devil of a day."

She waited, with her black eyes fixed on his face. Then--

"What of that? You men are so impressionable and self-conscious. One day
is like another, hard, hard--and there's an end of it, till the great
day comes. I came over for a very good reason. They wrote to warn Peter
Ivanovitch of their arrival. But where from? Only from Cherbourg on a
bit of ship's notepaper. Anybody could have done that. Yakovlitch has
lived for years and years in America. I am the only one at hand who had
known him well in the old days. I knew him very well indeed. So Peter
Ivanovitch telegraphed, asking me to come. It's natural enough, is it
not?"

"You came to vouch for his identity?" inquired Razumov.

"Yes. Something of the kind. Fifteen years of a life like his make
changes in a man. Lonely, like a crow in a strange country. When I think
of Yakovlitch before he went to America--"

The softness of the low tone caused Razumov to glance at her sideways.
She sighed; her black eyes were looking away; she had plunged the
fingers of her right hand deep into the mass of nearly white hair, and
stirred them there absently. When she withdrew her hand the little hat
perched on the top of her head remained slightly tilted, with a queer
inquisitive effect, contrasting strongly with the reminiscent murmur
that escaped her.

"We were not in our first youth even then. But a man is a child always."

Razumov thought suddenly, "They have been living together." Then aloud--

"Why didn't you follow him to America?" he asked poi