ent."

"It is quite possible that I don't understand," I admitted.

That propensity of lifting every problem from the plane of the
understandable by means of some sort of mystic expression, is very
Russian. I knew her well enough to have discovered her scorn for all
the practical forms of political liberty known to the western world.
I suppose one must be a Russian to understand Russian simplicity, a
terrible corroding simplicity in which mystic phrases clothe a naive and
hopeless cynicism. I think sometimes that the psychological secret
of the profound difference of that people consists in this, that they
detest life, the irremediable life of the earth as it is, whereas
we westerners cherish it with perhaps an equal exaggeration of its
sentimental value. But this is a digression indeed....

I helped these ladies into the tramcar and they asked me to call in
the afternoon. At least Mrs. Haldin asked me as she climbed up, and her
Natalka smiled down at the dense westerner indulgently from the rear
platform of the moving car. The light of the clear wintry forenoon was
softened in her grey eyes.

Mr. Razumov's record, like the open book of fate, revives for me the
memory of that day as something startlingly pitiless in its freedom from
all forebodings. Victor Haldin was still with the living, but with the
living whose only contact with life is the expectation of death. He must
have been already referring to the last of his earthly affections, the
hours of that obstinate silence, which for him was to be prolonged into
eternity. That afternoon the ladies entertained a good many of their
compatriots--more than was usual for them to receive at one time; and
the drawing-room on the ground floor of a large house on the Boulevard
des Philosophes was very much crowded.

I outstayed everybody; and when I rose Miss Haldin stood up too. I took
her hand and was moved to revert to that morning's conversation in the
street.

"Admitting that we occidentals do not understand the character of
your..." I began.

It was as if she had been prepared for me by some mysterious
fore-knowledge. She checked me gently--

"Their impulses--their..." she sought the proper expression and found
it, but in French..."their _mouvements d'ame._"

Her voice was not much above a whisper.

"Very well," I said. "But still we are looking at a conflict. You say
it is not a conflict of classes and not a conflict of interests. Suppose
I admitted that. A