ed himself for his words, for his tone. All
day long he had been saying the wrong things. It was folly, worse than
folly. It was weakness; it was this disease of perversity overcoming his
will. Was this the way to meet speeches which certainly contained the
promise of future confidences from that woman who apparently had a
great store of secret knowledge and so much influence? Why give her this
puzzling impression? But she did not seem inimical. There was no anger
in her voice. It was strangely speculative.

"One does not know what to think, Razumov. You must have bitten
something bitter in your cradle." Razumov gave her a sidelong glance.

"H'm! Something bitter? That's an explanation," he muttered. "Only it
was much later. And don't you think, Sophia Antonovna, that you and I
come from the same cradle?"

The woman, whose name he had forced himself at last to pronounce (he had
experienced a strong repugnance in letting it pass his lips), the woman
revolutionist murmured, after a pause--

"You mean--Russia?"

He disdained even to nod. She seemed softened, her black eyes very
still, as though she were pursuing the simile in her thoughts to all
its tender associations. But suddenly she knitted her brows in a
Mephistophelian frown.

"Yes. Perhaps no wonder, then. Yes. One lies there lapped up in evils,
watched over by beings that are worse than ogres, ghouls, and vampires.
They must be driven away, destroyed utterly. In regard of that task
nothing else matters if men and women are determined and faithful.
That's how I came to feel in the end. The great thing is not to quarrel
amongst ourselves about all sorts of conventional trifles. Remember
that, Razumov."

Razumov was not listening. He had even lost the sense of being watched
in a sort of heavy tranquillity. His uneasiness, his exasperation, his
scorn were blunted at last by all these trying hours. It seemed to him
that now they were blunted for ever. "I am a match for them all,"
he thought, with a conviction too firm to be exulting. The woman
revolutionist had ceased speaking; he was not looking at her; there was
no one passing along the road. He almost forgot that he was not alone.
He heard her voice again, curt, businesslike, and yet betraying the
hesitation which had been the real reason of her prolonged silence.

"I say, Razumov!"

Razumov, whose face was turned away from her, made a grimace like a man
who hears a false note.

"Tell me: is it true that