“Not in Russia,” she breathed out so low that I only just caught the words. I looked at her with more attention.
“You too are anxious?”
She admitted after a moment of hesitation that she was.
“It is really such a long time since we heard....”
And before I could offer the usual banal suggestions she confided in me.
“Oh! But it is much worse than that. I wrote to a family we know in Petersburg. They had not seen him for more than a month. They thought he was already with us. They were even offended a little that he should have left Petersburg without calling on them. The husband of the lady went at once to his lodgings. Victor had left there and they did not know his address.”
I remember her catching her breath rather pitifully. Her brother had not been seen at lectures for a very long time either. He only turned up now and then at the University gate to ask the porter for his letters. And the gentleman friend was told that the student Haldin did not come to claim the last two letters for him. But the police came to inquire if the student Haldin ever received any correspondence at the University and took them away.
“My two last letters,” she said.
We faced each other. A few snow-flakes fluttered under the naked boughs. The sky was dark.
“What do you think could have happened?” I asked.