the aching terror of watchfulness, until there surges back into her
mind the recollection that the police are no longer there. Was he
right, this young man? Certainly she could not deny that some way
she feels more confidence now that the police are gone. She does
not have to spend her time watching their shadows in the shadows,
searching the darkness, the arm-chairs, the sofas, to rouse them,
to appeal in low tones to all they held binding, by their own name
and the name of their father, to promise them a bonus that would
amount to something if they watched well, to count them in order to
know where they all were, and, suddenly, to throw full in their
face the ray of light from her little dark-lantern in order to be
sure, absolutely sure, that she was face to face with them, one of
the police, and not with some other, some other with an infernal
machine under his arm. Yes, she surely had less work now that she
had no longer to watch the police. And she had less fear!

She thanked the young reporter for that. Where was he? Did he
remain in the pose of a porcelain statue all this time out there
on the lawn? She peered through the lattice of the veranda shutters
and looked anxiously out into the darkened garden. Where could
he be? Was that he, down yonder, that crouching black heap with an
unlighted pipe in his mouth? No, no. That, she knew well, was the
dwarf she genuinely loved, her little domovoi-doukh, the familiar
spirit of the house, who watched with her over the general's life
and thanks to whom serious injury had not yet befallen Feodor
Feodorovitch - one could not regard a mangled leg that seriously.
Ordinarily in her own country (she was from the Orel district) one
did not care to see the domovoi-doukh appear in flesh and blood.
When she was little she was always afraid that she would come upon
him around a turn of the path in her father's garden. She always