rt. My pupil looked
unpleasantly surprised.

Mrs. Haldin, with her immobility of feature and kindly expression of the
eyes, uttered from her armchair in her uncertain French, "_Mais l'ami
reviendra._" And so it was settled. I returned--not four times a week
as before, but pretty frequently. In the autumn we made some short
excursions together in company with other Russians. My friendship with
these ladies gave me a standing in the Russian colony which otherwise I
could not have had.

The day I saw in the papers the news of Mr. de P---'s assassination--it
was a Sunday--I met the two ladies in the street and walked with them
for some distance. Mrs. Haldin wore a heavy grey cloak, I remember,
over her black silk dress, and her fine eyes met mine with a very quiet
expression.

"We have been to the late service," she said. "Natalka came with me.
Her girl-friends, the students here, of course don't.... With us in
Russia the church is so identified with oppression, that it seems almost
necessary when one wishes to be free in this life, to give up all hope
of a future existence. But I cannot give up praying for my son."

She added with a sort of stony grimness, colouring slightly, and
in French, "_Ce n'est peut etre qu'une habitude._" ("It may be only
habit.")

Miss Haldin was carrying the prayer-book. She did not glance at her
mother.

"You and Victor are both profound believers," she said.

I communicated to them the news from their country which I had just
read in a cafe. For a whole minute we walked together fairly briskly in
silence. Then Mrs. Haldin murmured--

"There will be more trouble, more persecutions for this. They may be
even closing the University. There is neither peace nor rest in Russia
for one but in the grave.

"Yes. The way is hard," came from the daughter, looking straight before
her at the Chain of Jura covered with snow, like a white wall closing
the end of the street. "But concord is not so very far off."

"That is what my children think," observed Mrs. Haldin to me.

I did not conceal my feeling that these were strange times to talk of
concord. Nathalie Haldin surprised me by saying, as if she had thought
very much on the subject, that the occidentals did not understand the
situation. She was very calm and youthfully superior.

"You think it is a class conflict, or a conflict of interests, as
social contests are with you in Europe. But it is not that at all. It is
something quite differ