rished as her own child, and
who did not hear her. Ah, what use that the little fellow had gone to
search outside when the whole truth lay behind this door? Thinking of
him, she was embarrassed lest he should find her in that animalistic
posture, and she rose to her knees and worked her way over to the window
that looked out upon the Neva. The angle of the slanting blinds let her
see well enough what passed outside, and what she saw made her
spring to her feet. Below her the reporter was going through the same
incomprehensible maneuvers that she had seen him do in the garden. Three
pathways led to the little road that ran along the wall of the villa
by the bank of the Neva. The young man, still with his hands behind his
back and with his face up, took them one after the other. In the first
he stopped at the first step. He didn't take more than two steps in the
second. In the third, which cut obliquely toward the right and seemed to
run to the bank nearest Krestowsky Ostrow, she saw him advance slowly at
first, then more quickly among the small trees and hedges. Once only
he stopped and looked closely at the trunk of a tree against which he
seemed to pick out something invisible, and then he continued to the
bank. There he sat down on a stone and appeared to reflect, and then
suddenly he cast off his jacket and trousers, picked out a certain place
on the bank across from him, finished undressing and plunged into the
stream. She saw at once that he swam like a porpoise, keeping beneath
and showing his head from time to time, breathing, then diving below the
surface again. He reached Krestowsky Ostrow in a clump of reeds. Then he
disappeared. Below him, surrounded by trees, could be seen the red tiles
of the villa which sheltered Boris and Michael. From that villa a
person could see the window of the sitting-room in General Trebassof's
residence, but not what might occur along the bank of the river
just below its walls. An isvotchick drove along the distant route of
Krestowsky, conveying in his carriage a company of young officers and
young women who had been feasting and who sang as they rode; then deep
silence ensued. Matrena's eyes searched for Rouletabille, but could not
find him. How long was he going to stay hidden like that? She pressed
her face against the chill window. What was she waiting for? She waited
perhaps for someone to make a move on this side, for the door near her
to open and the traitorous figure of The