"The tone of her references to you was extremely friendly," remarked
Miss Haldin, after waiting for a while.

"Is that your impression? And she the most intelligent of the lot,
too. Things then are going as well as possible. Everything conspires
to...Ah! these conspirators," he said slowly, with an accent of scorn;
"they would get hold of you in no time! You know, Natalia Victorovna, I
have the greatest difficulty in saving myself from the superstition
of an active Providence. It's irresistible.... The alternative, of
course, would be the personal Devil of our simple ancestors. But, if
so, he has overdone it altogether--the old Father of Lies--our national
patron--our domestic god, whom we take with us when we go abroad. He has
overdone it. It seems that I am not simple enough.... That's it! I
ought to have known.... And I did know it," he added in a tone of
poignant distress which overcame my astonishment.

"This man is deranged," I said to myself, very much frightened.

The next moment he gave me a very special impression beyond the range of
commonplace definitions. It was as though he had stabbed himself outside
and had come in there to show it; and more than that--as though he were
turning the knife in the wound and watching the effect. That was the
impression, rendered in physical terms. One could not defend oneself
from a certain amount of pity. But it was for Miss Haldin, already so
tried in her deepest affections, that I felt a serious concern. Her
attitude, her face, expressed compassion struggling with doubt on the
verge of terror.

"What is it, Kirylo Sidorovitch?" There was a hint of tenderness in
that cry. He only stared at her in that complete surrender of all his
faculties which in a happy lover would have had the name of ecstasy.

"Why are you looking at me like this, Kirylo Sidorovitch? I have
approached you frankly. I need at this time to see clearly in
myself...." She ceased for a moment as if to give him an opportunity to
utter at last some word worthy of her exalted trust in her brother's
friend. His silence became impressive, like a sign of a momentous
resolution.

In the end Miss Haldin went on, appealingly--

"I have waited for you anxiously. But now that you have been moved to
come to us in your kindness, you alarm me. You speak obscurely. It seems
as if you were keeping back something from me."

"Tell me, Natalia Victorovna," he was heard at last in a strange
unringing voice, "whom