din, but to other people also. Having
come to this conclusion, he did not discover in himself any marked
reluctance to face the necessity, and very soon an anxiety to be done
with it began to torment him. He looked at his watch. No; it was not
absolutely too late.

The fifteen minutes with Mrs. Haldin were like the revenge of the
unknown: that white face, that weak, distinct voice; that head, at
first turned to him eagerly, then, after a while, bowed again and
motionless--in the dim, still light of the room in which his words
which he tried to subdue resounded so loudly--had troubled him like some
strange discovery. And there seemed to be a secret obstinacy in that
sorrow, something he could not understand; at any rate, something he had
not expected. Was it hostile? But it did not matter. Nothing could touch
him now; in the eyes of the revolutionists there was now no shadow on
his past. The phantom of Haldin had been indeed walked over, was left
behind lying powerless and passive on the pavement covered with snow.
And this was the phantom's mother consumed with grief and white as a
ghost. He had felt a pitying surprise. But that, of course, was of no
importance. Mothers did not matter. He could not shake off the poignant
impression of that silent, quiet, white-haired woman, but a sort of
sternness crept into his thoughts. These were the consequences. Well,
what of it? "Am I then on a bed of roses?" he had exclaimed to himself,
sitting at some distance with his eyes fixed upon that figure of sorrow.
He had said all he had to say to her, and when he had finished she had
not uttered a word. She had turned away her head while he was speaking.
The silence which had fallen on his last words had lasted for five
minutes or more. What did it mean? Before its incomprehensible character
he became conscious of anger in his stern mood, the old anger against
Haldin reawakened by the contemplation of Haldin's mother. And was
it not something like enviousness which gripped his heart, as if of
a privilege denied to him alone of all the men that had ever passed
through this world? It was the other who had attained to repose and yet
continued to exist in the affection of that mourning old woman, in
the thoughts of all these people posing for lovers of humanity. It
was impossible to get rid of him. "It's myself whom I have given up
to destruction," thought Razumov. "He has induced me to do it. I can't
shake him off."

Alarmed by that dis