and reactionary, victim and executioner,
betrayer and betrayed, they shall all be pitied together when the light
breaks on our black sky at last. Pitied and forgotten; for without that
there can be no union and no love."

"I hear. No revenge for you, then? Never? Not the least bit?" He smiled
bitterly with his colourless lips. "You yourself are like the very
spirit of that merciful future. Strange that it does not make it
easier.... No! But suppose that the real betrayer of your
brother--Ziemianitch had a part in it too, but insignificant and quite
involuntary--suppose that he was a young man, educated, an intellectual
worker, thoughtful, a man your brother might have trusted lightly,
perhaps, but still--suppose.... But there's a whole story there."

"And you know the story! But why, then--"

"I have heard it. There is a staircase in it, and even phantoms, but
that does not matter if a man always serves something greater than
himself--the idea. I wonder who is the greatest victim in that tale?"

"In that tale!" Miss Haldin repeated. She seemed turned into stone.

"Do you know why I came to you? It is simply because there is no one
anywhere in the whole great world I could go to. Do you understand
what I say? Not one to go to. Do you conceive the desolation of the
thought--no one--to--go--to?"

Utterly misled by her own enthusiastic interpretation of two lines in
the letter of a visionary, under the spell of her own dread of lonely
days, in their overshadowed world of angry strife, she was unable to
see the truth struggling on his lips. What she was conscious of was the
obscure form of his suffering. She was on the point of extending her
hand to him impulsively when he spoke again.

"An hour after I saw you first I knew how it would be. The terrors of
remorse, revenge, confession, anger, hate, fear, are like nothing to the
atrocious temptation which you put in my way the day you appeared before
me with your voice, with your face, in the garden of that accursed
villa."

She looked utterly bewildered for a moment; then, with a sort of
despairing insight went straight to the point.

"The story, Kirylo Sidorovitch, the story!"

"There is no more to tell!" He made a movement forward, and she actually
put her hand on his shoulder to push him away; but her strength failed
her, and he kept his ground, though trembling in every limb. "It ends
here--on this very spot." He pressed a denunciatory finger to his breast
wit