"You don't object to being understood, to being guided?" queried the
great feminist. Razumov exploded in a fierce whisper.

"In what sense? Be pleased to understand that I am a serious person. Who
do you take me for?"

They looked at each other very closely. Razumov's temper was cooled
by the impenetrable earnestness of the blue glasses meeting his stare.
Peter Ivanovitch turned the handle at last.

"You shall know directly," he said, pushing the door open.

A low-pitched grating voice was heard within the room.

"_Enfin_."

In the doorway, his black-coated bulk blocking the view, Peter
Ivanovitch boomed in a hearty tone with something boastful in it.

"Yes. Here I am!"

He glanced over his shoulder at Razumov, who waited for him to move on.

"And I am bringing you a proved conspirator--a real one this time. _Un
vrai celui la_."

This pause in the doorway gave the "proved conspirator" time to make
sure that his face did not betray his angry curiosity and his mental
disgust.

These sentiments stand confessed in Mr. Razumov's memorandum of
his first interview with Madame de S--. The very words I use in my
narrative are written where their sincerity cannot be suspected. The
record, which could not have been meant for anyone's eyes but his own,
was not, I think, the outcome of that strange impulse of indiscretion
common to men who lead secret lives, and accounting for the invariable
existence of "compromising documents" in all the plots and conspiracies
of history. Mr. Razumov looked at it, I suppose, as a man looks at
himself in a mirror, with wonder, perhaps with anguish, with anger or
despair. Yes, as a threatened man may look fearfully at his own face in
the glass, formulating to himself reassuring excuses for his appearance
marked by the taint of some insidious hereditary disease.

II

The Egeria of the "Russian Mazzini" produced, at first view, a strong
effect by the death-like immobility of an obviously painted face. The
eyes appeared extraordinarily brilliant. The figure, in a close-fitting
dress, admirably made, but by no means fresh, had an elegant stiffness.
The rasping voice inviting him to sit down; the rigidity of the upright
attitude with one arm extended along the back of the sofa, the white
gleam of the big eyeballs setting off the black, fathomless stare of the
enlarged pupils, impressed Razumov more than anything he had seen since
his hasty and secret departure from St. Petersburg.