en. And then
he paid no more attention to his steps. He seemed to study attentively
the rosy color in the east, breathing the delicacy of dawning morning in
the Isles, amid the silence of the earth, which still slumbered.

Bare-headed, face thrown back, hands behind his back, eyes raised and
fixed, he made a few steps, then suddenly stopped as if he had been
given an electric shock. As soon as he seemed to have recovered from
that shock he turned around and went a few steps back to another path,
into which he advanced, straight ahead, his face high, with the same
fixed look that he had had up to the time he so suddenly stopped, as
if something or someone advised or warned him not to go further. He
continually worked back toward the house, and thus he traversed all the
paths that led from the villa, but in all these excursions he took pains
not to place himself in the field of vision from Natacha's window, a
restricted field because of its location just around an abutment of the
building. To ascertain about this window he crept on all-fours up to the
garden-edge that ran along the foot of the wall and had sufficient proof
that no one had jumped out that way. Then he went to rejoin Matrena in
the veranda.

"No one has come into the garden this morning," said he, "and no one has
gone out of the villa into the garden. Now I am going to look outside
the grounds. Wait here; I'll be back in five minutes."

He went away, knocked discreetly on the window of the lodge and waited
some seconds. Ermolai came out and opened the gate for him. Matrena
moved to the threshold of the little sitting-room and watched Natacha's
door with horror. She felt her legs give under her, she could not stand
up under the diabolic thought of such a crime. Ah, that arm, that arm!
reaching out, making its way, with a little shining phial in its hand.
Pains of Christ! What could there be in the damnable books over which
Natacha and her companions pored that could make such abominable crimes
possible? Ah, Natacha, Natacha! it was from her that she would have
desired the answer, straining her almost to stifling on her rough bosom
and strangling her with her own strong hand that she might not hear the
response. Ah, Natacha, Natacha, whom she had loved so much! She sank to
the floor, crept across the carpet to the door, and lay there, stretched
like a beast, and buried her head in her arms while she wept over her
daughter. Natacha, Natacha, whom she had che