“The visit from that gentleman has not made it any easier, I fear.”
Miss Haldin stood before me with a peculiar expression in her eyes.
“I don’t pretend to understand completely. Some guide one must have,
even if one does not wholly give up the direction of one’s conduct to
him. I am an inexperienced girl, but I am not slavish, There has been
too much of that in Russia. Why should I not listen to him? There is no
harm in having one’s thoughts directed. But I don’t mind confessing
to you that I have not been completely candid with Peter Ivanovitch. I
don’t quite know what prevented me at the moment....”
She walked away suddenly from me to a distant part of the room; but
it was only to open and shut a drawer in a bureau. She returned with
a piece of paper in her hand. It was thin and blackened with close
handwriting. It was obviously a letter.
“I wanted to read you the very words,” she said. “This is one of my poor
brother’s letters. He never doubted. How could he doubt? They make only
such a small handful, these miserable oppressors, before the unanimous
will of our people.”
“Your brother believed in the power of a people’s will to achieve
anything?”
“It was his religion,” declared Miss Haldin.