lustration: "I WAITED A MOMENT TO TAKE BREATH."]

That evening I had come home rather late, and had then sat and chatted
for a long while with aunt Vera, so that it was well towards midnight
before I started to go to bed. Half-way upstairs, I was stopped by a
noise; footsteps and stifled voices, mingled with the clang of spurs and
sabres. I waited a moment, to take breath, which had failed me
suddenly; then I went back downstairs. A violent pull at the bell, an
imperative pull, sounded at the garden gate; and in a moment was
followed by another at the door of the house. It woke the old nurse, and
brought my aunt Vera from her room. Having been a little forewarned by
me of the possibility of such a visit as this, she questioned me with a
frightened glance. I answered "Yes," by a sign of the head, and begged
her under my breath to delay "them" as long as possible before letting
"them" come in. The idea of being able to render me a service, perhaps
the last, gave her strength and courage; and while slowly, very slowly,
she moved towards the door, where the nocturnal visitors were getting
impatient and trying to force the lock, I went into the dining-room. A
moment later I heard her sweet trembling voice assuring Monsieur le
Colonel de Gendarmerie that there was no one in the house; all the
family were at Moroznoie; my uncle had been in town on Monday, but had
left again on Tuesday, and wouldn't return till the end of next week;
and there was no one here but herself, the speaker, and a young lady
visiting her. In this little respite, which I had arranged for myself
without too well knowing why, I remained inert in the room, lighted
feebly by a single candle, and tried to gather my thoughts together:
they were slow enough to respond to my efforts. My first notion was that
of flight, and, automatically, I opened a window. Close at hand, behind
some shrubbery, I perceived the glitter of a gendarme's uniform. There
would surely be others in the garden and in the courtyard; and for the
rest, fly--? How, and whither? I shut the window, and coming back to the
middle of the room, I caught a glimpse of myself in the chimney-glass. I
was very pale. Was I going to be a coward? This question, and that pale
face in the mirror, awoke in me other thoughts, brought back to my
memory other faces: that of my brother, who, a few months before, had
gone so bravely from his home, to which he would never return, to the
prison that he would perhap