her spirit will
follow."

Miss Haldin unclasped her hands and let them fall by her side.

"You think so?" he queried profoundly. Miss Haldin's lips were slightly
parted. Something unexpected and unfathomable in that young man's
character had fascinated her from the first. "No! There's neither truth
nor consolation to be got from the phantoms of the dead," he added after
a weighty pause. "I might have told her something true; for instance,
that your brother meant to save his life--to escape. There can be no
doubt of that. But I did not."

"You did not! But why?"

"I don't know. Other thoughts came into my head," he answered. He seemed
to me to be watching himself inwardly, as though he were trying to count
his own heart-beats, while his eyes never for a moment left the face
of the girl. "You were not there," he continued. "I had made up my mind
never to see you again."

This seemed to take her breath away for a moment.

"You.... How is it possible?"

"You may well ask.... However, I think that I refrained from telling
your mother from prudence. I might have assured her that in the last
conversation he held as a free man he mentioned you both...."

"That last conversation was with you," she struck in her deep, moving
voice. "Some day you must...."

"It was with me. Of you he said that you had trustful eyes. And why I
have not been able to forget that phrase I don't know. It meant
that there is in you no guile, no deception, no falsehood, no
suspicion--nothing in your heart that could give you a conception of a
living, acting, speaking lie, if ever it came in your way. That you are
a predestined victim.... Ha! what a devilish suggestion!"

The convulsive, uncontrolled tone of the last words disclosed the
precarious hold he had over himself. He was like a man defying his own
dizziness in high places and tottering suddenly on the very edge of the
precipice. Miss Haldin pressed her hand to her breast. The dropped black
veil lay on the floor between them. Her movement steadied him. He looked
intently on that hand till it descended slowly, and then raised again
his eyes to her face. But he did not give her time to speak.

"No? You don't understand? Very well." He had recovered his calm by a
miracle of will. "So you talked with Sophia Antonovna?"

"Yes. Sophia Antonovna told me...." Miss Haldin stopped, wonder
growing in her wide eyes.

"H'm. That's the respectable enemy," he muttered, as though he were
alone.