He did not see, of course, his own progress since that day, or the many things that Russia had already done for him, but he did feel that such situations as the one he was now sharing were, to-day, much more in the natural order of things than they would have been four months before....

He dozed off and then was awakened, sharply, abruptly, by the sound of Markovitch’s padded feet.  There could be no mistaking them; very softly they went past Bohun’s door, down the passage towards the dining-room.  He sat up in bed, and all the other sounds of the night seemed suddenly to be accentuated—­the dripping of the tap, the blowing of the wind, and even the heavy breathing of old Sacha, who always slept in a sort of cupboard near the kitchen, with her legs hanging out into the passage.  Suddenly no sound!  The house was still, and, with that, the sense of danger and peril was redoubled, as though the house were holding its breath as it watched....

Bohun could endure it no longer; he got up, put on his dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, and went out.  When he got as far as the dining-room door he saw that Markovitch was standing in the middle of the room with a lighted candle in his hand.  The glimmer of the candle flung a circle, outside which all was dusk.  Within the glimmer there was Markovitch, his hair rough and strangely like a wig, his face pale yellow, and wearing an old quilted bed-jacket of a purple green colour.  He was in a night-dress, and his naked legs were like sticks of tallow.

He stood there, the candle shaking in his hand, as though he were uncertain as to what he would do next.  He was saying something to himself, Bohun thought.

At any rate his lips were moving.  Then he put his hand into the pocket of his bed-coat and took out a revolver.  Bohun saw it gleam in the candle-light.  He held it up close to his eyes as though he were short-sighted and seemed to sniff at it.  Then, clumsily, Bohun said, he opened it, to see whether it were loaded, I suppose, and closed it again.  After that, very softly indeed, he shuffled off towards the door of Semyonov’s room, the room that had once been the sanctuary of his inventions.

All this time young Bohun was paralysed.  He said that all his life now, in spite of his having done quite decently in France, he would doubt his capacity in a crisis because, during the whole of this affair, he never stirred.  But that was because it was all exactly like a dream.  “I was in the dream, you know, as well as the other fellows.  You know those dreams when you’re doing your very damnedest to wake up—­when you struggle and sweat and know you’ll die if something doesn’t happen—­well, it was like that, except that I didn’t struggle and swear, but just stood there, like a painted picture, watching....”