Wiguniewski, who had been a constant witness of her inner transformations for months past, was not surprised at her speech. His eyes, too, sought the sleeper’s face. With a deep breath he said, “Yesterday a student of nineteen, Semyon Markovitch, heard of Ivan Becker’s recanting and shot himself in his room. I went there and saw the body. If you had seen that dead boy, Eva, you would speak differently. A little differently, at all events. Did you ever see a lad lie in his coffin with a little black wound in his temple? He was charming and innocent as a girl, and yet he could experience this unspeakable woe and entertain this determined despair at a loss beyond measure.” A shiver passed over Eva’s shoulders, and she smiled with a glittering feverishness that made her seem strangely possessed and heartless. The Prince continued in a matter-of-fact tone. “No doubt there’s a good deal that is alluring about this letter. Why shouldn’t a man like Ivan Becker render his breach of faith less repulsive by some plausible psychological excuses? I am ready to grant you that he acted neither in conscious hypocrisy nor from any self-seeking motive. But he wouldn’t be the genuine Russian that he is--emotional, turbid, fanatical, self-tormenting--if his transformation were not to entail all the fatal consequences of a systematic and deliberate treachery. He thinks that what he calls his awakening will serve mankind. In the meantime, out of blindness and weakness, confusion and mistaken moral fervour, he rushes into the claws of the beast that waits mercilessly in every corner and nook of Europe seeking to destroy and annihilate. And what I am doing now is passing a most charitable judgment. We happen to know that he has opened negotiations with the Holy Synod and is corresponding eagerly with the secret cabinet. Here in Moscow, as well as in Kiev and Odessa, arrests have been made in rapid succession which must be attributed to him. As things are, he alone could have furnished the information without which the authorities would not have ventured on these steps. These are facts that speak for themselves.” Eva pressed her right hand against her bosom, and stared, as though fascinated, into the air where she saw a vision that caused her to feel a rapidly alternating horror and ecstasy. Her lips moved as though to put a question, but she restrained herself. With large and earnest eyes she looked at Wiguniewski, and, whispered: “I suddenly have a longing that burns my heart, but I do not know after what. I should like to climb a mountain far beyond the snowline; or fare on a ship out into uncharted seas; or fly above the earth in an aeroplane. No, it is none of these things. I should like to go into a forest, to a lonely chapel, and cast myself down and pray. Will you go on such a pilgrimage with me? To some far monastery in the steppes?”