thought suddenly, "I might have been the chosen
instrument of Providence. This is a manner of speaking, but there may be
truth in every manner of speaking. What if that absurd saying were true
in its essence?"

He meditated for a while, then sat down, his legs stretched out, with
stony eyes, and with his arms hanging down on each side of the chair
like a man totally abandoned by Providence--desolate.

He noted the time of Haldin's departure and continued to sit still for
another half-hour; then muttering, "And now to work," drew up to the
table, seized the pen and instantly dropped it under the influence of a
profoundly disquieting reflection: "There's three weeks gone by and no
word from Mikulin."

What did it mean! Was he forgotten? Possibly. Then why not remain
forgotten--creep in somewhere? Hide. But where? How? With whom? In what
hole? And was it to be for ever, or what?

But a retreat was big with shadowy dangers. The eye of the social
revolution was on him, and Razumov for a moment felt an unnamed and
despairing dread, mingled with an odious sense of humiliation. Was it
possible that he no longer belonged to himself? This was damnable.
But why not simply keep on as before? Study. Advance. Work hard as if
nothing had happened (and first of all win the Silver Medal), acquire
distinction, become a great reforming servant of the greatest of States.
Servant, too, of the mightiest homogeneous mass of mankind with a
capability for logical, guided development in a brotherly solidarity
of force and aim such as the world had never dreamt of... the Russian
nation!

Calm, resolved, steady in his great purpose, he was stretching his hand
towards the pen when he happened to glance towards the bed. He rushed at
it, enraged, with a mental scream: "it's you, crazy fanatic, who stands
in the way!" He flung the pillow on the floor violently, tore the
blankets aside.... Nothing there. And, turning away, he caught for
an instant in the air, like a vivid detail in a dissolving view of two
heads, the eyes of General T--- and of Privy-Councillor Mikulin side
by side fixed upon him, quite different in character, but with the same
unflinching and weary and yet purposeful expression...servants of the
nation!

Razumov tottered to the washstand very alarmed about himself, drank some
water and bathed his forehead. "This will pass and leave no trace," he
thought confidently. "I am all right." But as to supposing that he had
been forgot