or restored my sight, and I went on
contemplating the empty chair in the empty ante-room. The meaning
of what I had seen reached my mind with a staggering shock. I seized
Natalia Haldin by the shoulder.

"That miserable wretch has carried off your veil!" I cried, in the
scared, deadened voice of an awful discovery. "He...."

The rest remained unspoken. I stepped back and looked down at her, in
silent horror. Her hands were lying lifelessly, palms upwards, on her
lap. She raised her grey eyes slowly. Shadows seemed to come and go in
them as if the steady flame of her soul had been made to vacillate
at last in the cross-currents of poisoned air from the corrupted dark
immensity claiming her for its own, where virtues themselves fester into
crimes in the cynicism of oppression and revolt.

"It is impossible to be more unhappy...." The languid whisper of her
voice struck me with dismay. "It is impossible.... I feel my heart
becoming like ice."

IV

Razumov walked straight home on the wet glistening pavement. A heavy
shower passed over him; distant lightning played faintly against the
fronts of the dumb houses with the shuttered shops all along the Rue
de Carouge; and now and then, after the faint flash, there was a faint,
sleepy rumble; but the main forces of the thunderstorm remained
massed down the Rhone valley as if loath to attack the respectable and
passionless abode of democratic liberty, the serious-minded town of
dreary hotels, tendering the same indifferent, hospitality to tourists
of all nations and to international conspirators of every shade.

The owner of the shop was making ready to close when Razumov entered and
without a word extended his hand for the key of his room. On reaching
it for him, from a shelf, the man was about to pass a small joke as to
taking the air in a thunderstorm, but, after looking at the face of his
lodger, he only observed, just to say something--

"You've got very wet."

"Yes, I am washed clean," muttered Razumov, who was dripping from head
to foot, and passed through the inner door towards the staircase leading
to his room.

He did not change his clothes, but, after lighting the candle, took off
his watch and chain, laid them on the table, and sat down at once to
write. The book of his compromising record was kept in a locked drawer,
which he pulled out violently, and did not even trouble to push back
afterwards.

In this queer pedantism of a man who had read, thought