ly and went on looking straight before him. Suddenly
on the snow, stretched on his back right across his path, he saw Haldin,
solid, distinct, real, with his inverted hands over his eyes, clad in a
brown close-fitting coat and long boots. He was lying out of the way a
little, as though he had selected that place on purpose. The snow round
him was untrodden.

This hallucination had such a solidity of aspect that the first movement
of Razumov was to reach for his pocket to assure himself that the key of
his rooms was there. But he checked the impulse with a disdainful curve
of his lips. He understood. His thought, concentrated intensely on
the figure left lying on his bed, had culminated in this extraordinary
illusion of the sight. Razumov tackled the phenomenon calmly. With a
stern face, without a check and gazing far beyond the vision, he walked
on, experiencing nothing but a slight tightening of the chest. After
passing he turned his head for a glance, and saw only the unbroken track
of his footsteps over the place where the breast of the phantom had been
lying.

Razumov walked on and after a little time whispered his wonder to
himself.

"Exactly as if alive! Seemed to breathe! And right in my way too! I have
had an extraordinary experience."

He made a few steps and muttered through his set teeth--

"I shall give him up."

Then for some twenty yards or more all was blank. He wrapped his cloak
closer round him. He pulled his cap well forward over his eyes.

"Betray. A great word. What is betrayal? They talk of a man betraying
his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond
first. All a man can betray is his conscience. And how is my conscience
engaged here; by what bond of common faith, of common conviction, am
I obliged to let that fanatical idiot drag me down with him? On the
contrary--every obligation of true courage is the other way."

Razumov looked round from under his cap.

"What can the prejudice of the world reproach me with? Have I provoked
his confidence? No! Have I by a single word, look, or gesture given him
reason to suppose that I accepted his trust in me? No! It is true that
I consented to go and see his Ziemianitch. Well, I have been to see him.
And I broke a stick on his back too--the brute."

Something seemed to turn over in his head bringing uppermost a
singularly hard, clear facet of his brain.

"It would be better, however," he reflected with a quite different
me