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RUDIN abroad well, by that time I had grown older. Rudin struck me in his true light.’

‘What was it exactly you discovered in him?’

‘Why, all I have been telling you the last hour. But enough of him. Perhaps everything will turn out all right. I only wanted to show you that, if I do judge him hardly, it is not because I don’t know him. As far as concerns Natalya Alexyevna, I won’t say any more, but you should observe your brother.’

‘My brother! Why?’

‘Why, look at him. Do you really notice nothing?’

Alexandra Pavlovna looked down.

‘You are right,’ she assented. ‘Certainly— my brother—for some time he has not been himself. But do you really think——’

‘Hush! I think he is coming,’ whispered Lezhnyov. ‘But Natalya is not a child, believe me, though unluckily she is as inexperienced as a child. You will see, that girl will astonish us all.’

‘In what way?’

‘Oh! in this way. Do you know it’s precisely girls like that who drown themselves, take poison, and so forth? Don’t be misled by 129