Revolutionist and reactionary, victim and executioner,
betrayer and betrayed, they shall all be pitied together when the light
breaks on our black sky at last. Pitied and forgotten; for without that
there can be no union and no love."
"I hear. No revenge for you, then? Never? Not the least bit?" He smiled
bitterly with his colourless lips. "You yourself are like the very
spirit of that merciful future. Strange that it does not make it
easier.... No! But suppose that the real betrayer of your
brother--Ziemianitch had a part in it too, but insignificant and quite
involuntary--suppose that he was a young man, educated, an intellectual
worker, thoughtful, a man your brother might have trusted lightly,
perhaps, but still--suppose.... But there's a whole story there."
"And you know the story! But why, then--"
"I have heard it. There is a staircase in it, and even phantoms, but
that does not matter if a man always serves something greater than
himself--the idea. I wonder who is the greatest victim in that tale?"
"In that tale!" Miss Haldin repeated. She seemed turned into stone.
"Do you know why I came to you? It is simply because there is no one
anywhere in the whole great world I could go to. Do you understand
what I say? Not one to go to. Do you conceive the desolation of the
thought--no one--to--go--to?"
Utterly misled by her own enthusiastic interpretation of two lines in
the letter of a visionary, under the spell of her own dread of lonely
days, in their overshadowed world of angry strife, she was unable to
see the truth struggling on his lips.
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