untouched), may be for other beings very much like
ourselves and living under the same sky, a heavy trial of fortitude, a
matter of tears and anguish and blood. Mrs. Haldin had felt the pangs
of her own generation. There was that enthusiast brother of hers--the
officer they shot under Nicholas. A faintly ironic resignation is
no armour for a vulnerable heart. Mrs. Haldin, struck at through her
children, was bound to suffer afresh from the past, and to feel the
anguish of the future. She was of those who do not know how to heal
themselves, of those who are too much aware of their heart, who, neither
cowardly nor selfish, look passionately at its wounds--and count the
cost.

Such thoughts as these seasoned my modest, lonely bachelor's meal. If
anybody wishes to remark that this was a roundabout way of thinking of
Natalia Haldin, I can only retort that she was well worth some concern.
She had all her life before her. Let it be admitted, then, that I was
thinking of Natalia Haldin's life in terms of her mother's character, a
manner of thinking about a girl permissible for an old man, not too old
yet to have become a stranger to pity. There was almost all her youth
before her; a youth robbed arbitrarily of its natural lightness and joy,
overshadowed by an un-European despotism; a terribly sombre youth
given over to the hazards of a furious strife between equally ferocious
antagonisms.

I lingered over my thoughts more than I should have done. One felt so
helpless, and even worse--so unrelated, in a way. At the last moment I
hesitated as to going there at all. What was the good?

The evening was already advanced when, turning into the Boulevard des
Philosophes, I saw the light in the window at the corner. The blind was
down, but I could imagine behind it Mrs. Haldin seated in the chair, in
her usual attitude, looking out for some one, which had lately acquired
the poignant quality of mad expectation.

I thought that I was sufficiently authorized by the light to knock at
the door. The ladies had not retired as yet. I only hoped they would
not have any visitors of their own nationality. A broken-down, retired
Russian official was to be found there sometimes in the evening. He was
infinitely forlorn and wearisome by his mere dismal presence. I think
these ladies tolerated his frequent visits because of an ancient
friendship with Mr. Haldin, the father, or something of that sort. I
made up my mind that if I found him prosing