terrace with his swinging gait, the black skirts of the frock-coat floating clear of his stout light grey legs. I confess to having looked upon these young people as the quarry of the “heroic fugitive.” I had the notion that they would not be allowed to escape capture. But of that I said nothing to Miss Haldin, only as she still remained uncommunicative, I pressed her a little.
“Well—but you can tell me at least your impression.”
She turned her head to look at me, and turned away again.
“Impression?” she repeated slowly, almost dreamily; then in a quicker tone—
“He seems to be a man who has suffered more from his thoughts than from evil fortune.”
“From his thoughts, you say?”
“And that is natural enough in a Russian,” she took me up. “In a young Russian; so many of them are unfit for action, and yet unable to rest.”
“And you think he is that sort of man?”
“No, I do not judge him. How could I, so suddenly? You asked for my impression—I explain my impression. I—I—don’t know the world, nor yet the people in it; I have been too solitary—I am too young to trust my own opinions.”
“Trust your instinct,” I advised her. “Most women trust to that, and make no worse mistakes than men. In this case you have your brother’s letter to help you.”
She drew a deep breath like a light sigh.
“Unstained, lofty, and solitary existences,” she quoted as if to herself. But I caught the wistful murmur distinctly.
“High praise,” I whispered to her.
“The highest possible.”
“So high that, like the award of happiness, it is more fit to come only at the end of a life. But still no common or altogether unworthy personality could have suggested such a confident exaggeration of praise and…”
“Ah!” She interrupted me ardently. “And if you had only known the heart from which that judgment has come!”
She ceased on that note, and for a space I reflected on the character of the words which I perceived very well must tip the scale of the girl’s feelings in that young man’s favour. They had not the sound of a casual utterance. Vague they were to my Western mind and to my Western sentiment, but I could not forget that, standing by Miss Haldin’s side, I was like a traveller in a strange country. It had also become clear to me that Miss Haldin was unwilling to enter into the details of the only material part of their visit to the Château Borel. But I was not hurt. Somehow I didn’t feel it to be a want of confidence. It was some other difficulty—a difficulty I could not resent. And it was without the slightest resentment that I said—
“Very well. But on that high ground, which I will not dispute, you, like any one else in such circumstances, you must have made for yourself a representation of that exceptional friend, a mental image of him, and—please tell me—you were not disappointed?”