ences, an unstable state of the soul, till the final
appeasement of the convert in the perfect fierceness of conviction. She
had seen--often had only divined--scores of these young men and young
women going through an emotional crisis. This young man looked like a
moody egotist. And besides, it was a special--a unique case. She had
never met an individuality which interested and puzzled her so much.

"Take care, Razumov, my good friend. If you carry on like this you will
go mad. You are angry with everybody and bitter with yourself, and on
the look out for something to torment yourself with."

"It's intolerable!" Razumov could only speak in gasps. "You must admit
that I can have no illusions on the attitude which...it isn't clear...or
rather only too clear."

He made a gesture of despair. It was not his courage that failed him.
The choking fumes of falsehood had taken him by the throat--the thought
of being condemned to struggle on and on in that tainted atmosphere
without the hope of ever renewing his strength by a breath of fresh air.

"A glass of cold water is what you want." Sophia Antonovna glanced up
the grounds at the house and shook her head, then out of the gate at
the brimful placidity of the lake. With a half-comical shrug of the
shoulders, she gave the remedy up in the face of that abundance.

"It is you, my dear soul, who are flinging yourself at something which
does not exist. What is it? Self-reproach, or what? It's absurd. You
couldn't have gone and given yourself up because your comrade was
taken."

She remonstrated with him reasonably, at some length too. He had nothing
to complain of in his reception. Every new-comer was discussed more or
less. Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.
No one that she could remember had been shown from the first so much
confidence. Soon, very soon, perhaps sooner than he expected, he would
be given an opportunity of showing his devotion to the sacred task of
crushing the Infamy.

Razumov, listening quietly, thought: "It may be that she is trying to
lull my suspicions to sleep. On the other hand, it is obvious that most
of them are fools." He moved aside a couple of paces and, folding his
arms on his breast, leaned back against the stone pillar of the gate.

"As to what remains obscure in the fate of that poor Haldin," Sophia
Antonovna dropped into a slowness of utterance which was to Razumov like
the falling of molten lead drop by drop;