head and demanded simply in a broken voice:

"You can tell me nothing now? But when will you tell me?"

Natacha lifted her eyes to his, then her look went past him toward
heaven, and from her lips came just one word, in a sob:

"Never."

Matrena Petrovna, Koupriane and the reporter shuddered before the high
and terrible thing that happened then. Feodor had taken his daughter's
face between his hands. He looked long at those eyes raised toward
heaven, the mouth which had just uttered the word "Never," then, slowly,
his rude lips went to the tortured, quivering lips of the girl. He held
her close. She raised her head wildly, triumphantly, and cried, with arm
extended toward Matrena Petrovna:

"He believes me! He believes me! And you would have believed me also if
you had been my real mother."

Her head fell back and she dropped unconscious to the floor. Feodor fell
to his knees, tending her, deploring her, motioning the others out of
the room.

"Go away! All of you, go! All! You, too, Matrena Petrovna. Go away!"

They disappeared, terrified by his savage gesture.

In the little datcha across the river at Krestowsky there was a body.
Secret Service agents guarded it while they waited for their chief.
Michael Nikolaievitch had come there to die, and the police had
reached him just at his last breath. They were behind him as, with the
death-rattle in his throat, he pulled himself into his chamber and fell
in a heap. Katharina the Bohemian was there. She bent her quick-witted,
puzzled head over his death agony. The police swarmed everywhere,
ransacking, forcing locks, pulling drawers from the bureau and tables,
emptying the cupboards. Their search took in everything, even to ripping
the mattresses, and not respecting the rooms of Boris Mourazoff, who
was away this night. They searched thoroughly, but they found absolutely
nothing they were looking for in Michael's rooms. But they accumulated a
multitude of publications that belonged to Boris: Western books, essays
on political economy, a history of the French Revolution, and verses
that a man ought to hang for. They put them all under seal. During the
search Michael died in Katharina's arms. She had held him close, after
opening his clothes over the chest, doubtless to make his last breaths
easier. The unfortunate officer had received a bullet at the back of
the head just after he had plunged into the Neva from the rear of the
Trebassof datcha and started to swim a