"We need not envy them."
"Why this scorn?" I asked gently. "It may be that our bargain was not
a very lofty one. But the terms men and nations obtain from Fate are
hallowed by the price."
Mrs. Haldin turned her head away and looked out of the window for a
time, with that new, sombre, extinct gaze of her sunken eyes which so
completely made another woman of her.
"That Englishman, this correspondent," she addressed me suddenly, "do
you think it is possible that he knew my son?"
To this strange question I could only say that it was possible of
course. She saw my surprise.
"If one knew what sort of man he was one could perhaps write to him,"
she murmured.
"Mother thinks," explained Miss Haldin, standing between us, with one
hand resting on the back of my chair, "that my poor brother perhaps did
not try to save himself."
I looked up at Miss Haldin in sympathetic consternation, but Miss Haldin
was looking down calmly at her mother. The latter said--
"We do not know the address of any of his friends. Indeed, we know
nothing of his Petersburg comrades. He had a multitude of young friends,
only he never spoke much of them. One could guess that they were his
disciples and that they idolized him. But he was so modest. One would
think that with so many devoted.
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