him. And all the same he could not give it up. He
became lucid about it. "What can he expect?" he thought. "The halter--in
the end. And I...."

This argument was interrupted by Haldin's voice.

"Why be anxious for me? They can kill my body, but they cannot exile my
soul from this world. I tell you what--I believe in this world so much
that I cannot conceive eternity otherwise than as a very long life. That
is perhaps the reason I am so ready to die."

"H'm," muttered Razumov, and biting his lower lip he continued to walk
up and down and to carry on his strange argument.

Yes, to a man in such a situation--of course it would be an act of
kindness. The question, however, was not how to be kind, but how to be
firm. He was a slippery customer.

"I too, Victor Victorovitch, believe in this world of ours," he said
with force. "I too, while I live.... But you seem determined to haunt
it. You can't seriously...mean..."

The voice of the motionless Haldin began--

"Haunt it! Truly, the oppressors of thought which quickens the world,
the destroyers of souls which aspire to perfection of human dignity,
they shall be haunted. As to the destroyers of my mere body, I have
forgiven them beforehand."

Razumov had stopped apparently to listen, but at the same time he was
observing his own sensations. He was vexed with himself for attaching so
much importance to what Haldin said.

"The fellow's mad," he thought firmly, but this opinion did not mollify
him towards Haldin. It was a particularly impudent form of lunacy--and
when it got loose in the sphere of public life of a country, it was
obviously the duty of every good citizen....

This train of thought broke off short there and was succeeded by a
paroxysm of silent hatred towards Haldin, so intense that Razumov
hastened to speak at random.

"Yes. Eternity, of course. I, too, can't very well represent it to
myself.... I imagine it, however, as something quiet and dull. There
would be nothing unexpected--don't you see? The element of time would be
wanting."

He pulled out his watch and gazed at it. Haldin turned over on his side
and looked on intently.

Razumov got frightened at this movement. A slippery customer this fellow
with a phantom. It was not midnight yet. He hastened on--

"And unfathomable mysteries! Can you conceive secret places in Eternity?
Impossible. Whereas life is full of them. There are secrets of birth,
for instance. One carries them on to the grave.