of severity. He walked to and fro to the
University, ascended stairs, paced the passages, listened to lectures,
took notes, crossed courtyards in angry aloofness, his teeth set hard
till his jaws ached.

He was perfectly aware of madcap Kostia gazing like a young retriever
from a distance, of the famished student with the red drooping nose,
keeping scrupulously away as desired; of twenty others, perhaps, he
knew well enough to speak to. And they all had an air of curiosity and
concern as if they expected something to happen. "This can't last much
longer," thought Razumov more than once. On certain days he was afraid
that anyone addressing him suddenly in a certain way would make him
scream out insanely a lot of filthy abuse. Often, after returning home,
he would drop into a chair in his cap and cloak and remain still for
hours holding some book he had got from the library in his hand; or
he would pick up the little penknife and sit there scraping his nails
endlessly and feeling furious all the time--simply furious. "This is
impossible," he would mutter suddenly to the empty room.

Fact to be noted: this room might conceivably have become physically
repugnant to him, emotionally intolerable, morally uninhabitable.
But no. Nothing of the sort (and he had himself dreaded it at first),
nothing of the sort happened. On the contrary, he liked his lodgings
better than any other shelter he, who had never known a home, had ever
hired before. He liked his lodgings so well that often, on that very
account, he found a certain difficulty in making up his mind to go out.
It resembled a physical seduction such as, for instance, makes a man
reluctant to leave the neighbourhood of a fire on a cold day.

For as, at that time, he seldom stirred except to go to the University
(what else was there to do?) it followed that whenever he went abroad he
felt himself at once closely involved in the moral consequences of his
act. It was there that the dark prestige of the Haldin mystery fell on
him, clung to him like a poisoned robe it was impossible to fling off.
He suffered from it exceedingly, as well as from the conversational,
commonplace, unavoidable intercourse with the other kind of students.
"They must be wondering at the change in me," he reflected anxiously. He
had an uneasy recollection of having savagely told one or two innocent,
nice enough fellows to go to the devil. Once a married professor he used
to call upon formerly addressed