e. Her tone was
quite imperious.

"You must bring the wild young thing here. She is wanted. I reckon upon
your success--mind!"

"She is not a wild young thing," muttered Razumov, in a surly voice.

"Well, then--that's all the same. She may be one of these young
conceited democrats. Do you know what I think? I think she is very much
like you in character. There is a smouldering fire of scorn in you. You
are darkly self-sufficient, but I can see your very soul."

Her shiny eyes had a dry, intense stare, which, missing Razumov, gave
him an absurd notion that she was looking at something which was visible
to her behind him. He cursed himself for an impressionable fool, and
asked with forced calmness--

"What is it you see? Anything resembling me?"

She moved her rigidly set face from left to right, negatively.

"Some sort of phantom in my image?" pursued Razumov slowly. "For, I
suppose, a soul when it is seen is just that. A vain thing. There are
phantoms of the living as well as of the dead."

The tenseness of Madame de S--'s stare had relaxed, and now she looked
at Razumov in a silence that became disconcerting.

"I myself have had an experience," he stammered out, as if compelled.
"I've seen a phantom once." The unnaturally red lips moved to frame a
question harshly.

"Of a dead person?"

"No. Living."

"A friend?"

"No."

"An enemy?"

"I hated him."

"Ah! It was not a woman, then?"

"A woman!" repeated Razumov, his eyes looking straight into the eyes
of Madame de S--. "Why should it have been a woman? And why this
conclusion? Why should I not have been able to hate a woman?"

As a matter of fact, the idea of hating a woman was new to him. At that
moment he hated Madame de S--. But it was not exactly hate. It was more
like the abhorrence that may be caused by a wooden or plaster figure of
a repulsive kind. She moved no more than if she were such a figure; even
her eyes, whose unwinking stare plunged into his own, though shining,
were lifeless, as though they were as artificial as her teeth. For the
first time Razumov became aware of a faint perfume, but faint as it was
it nauseated him exceedingly. Again Peter Ivanovitch tapped him slightly
on the shoulder. Thereupon he bowed, and was about to turn away when
he received the unexpected favour of a bony, inanimate hand extended to
him, with the two words in hoarse French--

"_Au revoir!_"

He bowed over the skeleton hand and left the room, escor