h force, and became perfectly still.

I ran forward, snatching up the chair, and was in time to catch hold of
Miss Haldin and lower her down. As she sank into it she swung half round
on my arm, and remained averted from us both, drooping over the back.
He looked at her with an appalling expressionless tranquillity.
Incredulity, struggling with astonishment, anger, and disgust, deprived
me for a time of the power of speech. Then I turned on him, whispering
from very rage--

"This is monstrous. What are you staying for? Don't let her catch sight
of you again. Go away!..." He did not budge. "Don't you understand
that your presence is intolerable--even to me? If there's any sense of
shame in you...."

Slowly his sullen eyes moved ill my direction. "How did this old man
come here?" he muttered, astounded.

Suddenly Miss Haldin sprang up from the chair, made a few steps, and
tottered. Forgetting my indignation, and even the man himself, I hurried
to her assistance. I took her by the arm, and she let me lead her into
the drawing-room. Away from the lamp, in the deeper dusk of the distant
end, the profile of Mrs. Haldin, her hands, her whole figure had
the stillness of a sombre painting. Miss Haldin stopped, and pointed
mournfully at the tragic immobility of her mother, who seemed to watch a
beloved head lying in her lap.

That gesture had an unequalled force of expression, so far-reaching in
its human distress that one could not believe that it pointed out merely
the ruthless working of political institutions. After assisting Miss
Haldin to the sofa, I turned round to go back and shut the door Framed
in the opening, in the searching glare of the white anteroom, my eyes
fell on Razumov, still there, standing before the empty chair, as if
rooted for ever to the spot of his atrocious confession. A wonder came
over me that the mysterious force which had torn it out of him had
failed to destroy his life, to shatter his body. It was there unscathed.
I stared at the broad line of his shoulders, his dark head, the amazing
immobility of his limbs. At his feet the veil dropped by Miss Haldin
looked intensely black in the white crudity of the light. He was gazing
at it spell-bound. Next moment, stooping with an incredible, savage
swiftness, he snatched it up and pressed it to his face with both hands.
Something, extreme astonishment perhaps, dimmed my eyes, so that he
seemed to vanish before he moved.

The slamming of the outer do