ar poverty.
Nina's torn boots and threadbare dress, and the utter absence of any
request ever made with regard to her own comfort, had not been lost
upon him. He knew how noble she was in bearing--how doubly noble she
was in never asking. If only there was nothing of deceit at the back to
mar it all!

He passed over the bridge, hardly knowing whither he was going, and
turned directly down towards Balatka's house. As he did so he observed
that certain repairs were needed in an adjoining building which
belonged to his father, and determined that a mason should be sent
there on the next day. Then he turned in under the archway, not passing
through it into the court, and there he stood looking up at the window,
in which Nina's small solitary lamp was twinkling. He knew that she was
sitting by the light, and that she was working. He knew that she would
be raised almost to a seventh heaven of delight if he would only call
her to the door and speak to her a dozen words before he returned to
his home. But he had no thought of doing it. Was it possible that she
should have this document in her keeping?--that was the thought that
filled his mind. He had bribed Lotta Luxa, and Lotta had sworn by her
Christian gods that the deed was in Nina's hands. If the thing was
false, why should they all conspire to tell the same falsehood? And yet
he knew that they were false in their natures. Their manner, the words
of each of them, betrayed something of falsehood to his well-tuned
ear, to his acute eye, to his sharp senses. But with Nina--from Nina
herself--everything that came from her spoke of truth. A sweet savour
of honesty hung about her breath, and was a blessing to him when he
was near enough to her to feel it. And yet he told himself that he was
bound to doubt. He stood for some half-hour in the archway, leaning
against the stonework at the side, and looking up at the window where
Nina was sitting. What was he to do? How should he carry himself in
this special period of his life? Great ideas about the destiny of his
people were mingled in his mind with suspicions as to Nina, of which he
should have been, and probably was, ashamed. He would certainly take
her away from Prague. He had already perceived that his marriage with a
Christian would be regarded in that stronghold of prejudice in which
he lived with so much animosity as to impede, and perhaps destroy, the
utility of his career. He would go away, taking Nina with him. And he