nt-blank.

She looked up at him with a perturbed air.

"Don't you remember what was going on fifteen years ago? It was a time
of activity. The Revolution has its history by this time. You are in
it and yet you don't seem to know it. Yakovlitch went away then on a
mission; I went back to Russia. It had to be so. Afterwards there was
nothing for him to come back to."

"Ah! indeed," muttered Razumov, with affected surprise. "Nothing!"

"What are you trying to insinuate" she exclaimed quickly. "Well, and
what then if he did get discouraged a little...."

"He looks like a Yankee, with that goatee hanging from his chin. A
regular Uncle Sam," growled Razumov. "Well, and you? You who went to
Russia? You did not get discouraged."

"Never mind. Yakovlitch is a man who cannot be doubted. He, at any rate,
is the right sort."

Her black, penetrating gaze remained fixed upon Razumov while she spoke,
and for a moment afterwards.

"Pardon me," Razumov inquired coldly, "but does it mean that you, for
instance, think that I am not the right sort?"

She made no protest, gave no sign of having heard the question;
she continued looking at him in a manner which he judged not to be
absolutely unfriendly. In Zurich when he passed through she had taken
him under her charge, in a way, and was with him from morning till night
during his stay of two days. She took him round to see several people.
At first she talked to him a great deal and rather unreservedly, but
always avoiding all reference to herself; towards the middle of the
second day she fell silent, attending him zealously as before, and even
seeing him off at the railway station, where she pressed his hand firmly
through the lowered carriage window, and, stepping back without a word,
waited till the train moved. He had noticed that she was treated with
quiet regard. He knew nothing of her parentage, nothing of her private
history or political record; he judged her from his own private point of
view, as being a distinct danger in his path. "Judged" is not perhaps
the right word. It was more of a feeling, the summing up of slight
impressions aided by the discovery that he could not despise her as he
despised all the others. He had not expected to see her again so soon.

No, decidedly; her expression was not unfriendly. Yet he perceived an
acceleration in the beat of his heart. The conversation could not be
abandoned at that point. He went on in accents of scrupulous inquiry--