her father, who has been brought to believe in the
dishonor of his daughter, and still to be silent when a word would have
proved her innocent; guarding it face to face with her fiance, whom she
loves, and repulses because marriage is forbidden to the girl who is
supposed to be rich and who will be poor; guarding it, above all--and
guarding it still--in the depths of the dungeon, and ready to take the
road to Siberia under the accusation of assassination, because that
ignominy is necessary for the safety of her father. That, Sire--oh,
Sire, do you see!"

"But you, how have you been able to penetrate into this guarded secret?"

"By watching her eyes. By observing, when she believed herself alone,
the look of terror and the gleams of love. And, beyond all, by looking
at her when she was looking at her father. Ah, Sire, there were moments
when on her mystic face one could read the wild joy and devotion of the
martyr. Then, by listening and by piecing together scraps of phrases
inconsistent with the idea of treachery, but which immediately acquired
meaning if one thought of the opposite, of sacrifice. Ah, that is it,
Sire! Consider always the alternative motive. What I finally could see
myself, the others, who had a fixed opinion about Natacha, could not
see. And why had they their fixed opinion? Simply because the idea of
compromise with the Nihilists aroused at once the idea of complicity!
For such people it is always the same thing--they never can see but
the one side of the situation. But, nevertheless, the situation had two
sides, as all situations have. The question was simple. The compromise
was certain. But why had Natacha compromised herself with the Nihilists?
Was it necessarily in order to lose her father? Might it not be, on the
contrary, in order to save him? When one has rendezvous with an enemy it
is not necessarily to enter into his game, sometimes it is to disarm
him with an offer. Between these two hypotheses, which I alone took the
trouble to examine, I did not hesitate long, because Natacha's every
attitude proclaimed her innocence: and her eyes, Sire, in which one
read purity and love, prevailed always with me against all the passing
appearances of disgrace and crime.

"I saw that Natacha negotiated with them. But what had she to place in
the scales against the life of her father? Nothing--except the fortune
that she would have one day.

"Some words she spoke about the impossibility of immediate marr