t on impulsively in short, vibrating
sentences--

"Listen to my story, Razumov!..." Her father was a clever but unlucky
artisan. No joy had lighted up his laborious days. He died at fifty;
all the years of his life he had panted under the thumb of masters whose
rapacity exacted from him the price of the water, of the salt, of the
very air he breathed; taxed the sweat of his brow and claimed the blood
of his sons. No protection, no guidance! What had society to say to him?
Be submissive and be honest. If you rebel I shall kill you. If you steal
I shall imprison you. But if you suffer I have nothing for you--nothing
except perhaps a beggarly dole of bread--but no consolation for your
trouble, no respect for your manhood, no pity for the sorrows of your
miserable life.

And so he laboured, he suffered, and he died. He died in the hospital.
Standing by the common grave she thought of his tormented existence--she
saw it whole. She reckoned the simple joys of life, the birthright of
the humblest, of which his gentle heart had been robbed by the crime of
a society which nothing can absolve.

"Yes, Razumov," she continued, in an impressive, lowered voice, "it was
like a lurid light in which I stood, still almost a child, and cursed
not the toil, not the misery which had been his lot, but the great
social iniquity of the system resting on unrequited toil and unpitied
sufferings. From that moment I was a revolutionist."

Razumov, trying to raise himself above the dangerous weaknesses of
contempt or compassion, had preserved an impassive countenance. She,
with an unaffected touch of mere bitterness, the first he could notice
since he had come in contact with the woman, went on--

"As I could not go to the Church where the priests of the system
exhorted such unconsidered vermin as I to resignation, I went to the
secret societies as soon as I knew how to find my way. I was sixteen
years old--no more, Razumov! And--look at my white hair."

In these last words there was neither pride nor sadness. The bitterness
too was gone.

"There is a lot of it. I had always magnificent hair, even as a chit of
a girl. Only, at that time we were cutting it short and thinking that
there was the first step towards crushing the social infamy. Crush the
Infamy! A fine watchword! I would placard it on the walls of prisons and
palaces, carve it on hard rocks, hang it out in letters of fire on that
empty sky for a sign of hope and terror--a portent