I felt my arm seized above the elbow, and next instant found myself swung so as to face Mr. Razumov.

“You spring up from the ground before me with this talk.  Who the devil are you?  This is not to be borne!  Why!  What for?  What do you know what is or is not peculiar?  What have you to do with any confounded circumstances, or with anything that happens in Russia, anyway?”

He leaned on his stick with his other hand, heavily; and when he let go my arm, I was certain in my mind that he was hardly able to keep on his feet.

“Let us sit down at one of these vacant tables,” I proposed, disregarding this display of unexpectedly profound emotion.  It was not without its effect on me, I confess.  I was sorry for him.

“What tables?  What are you talking about?  Oh—­the empty tables?  The tables there.  Certainly.  I will sit at one of the empty tables.”

I led him away from the path to the very centre of the raft of deals before the chalet.  The Swiss couple were gone by that time.  We were alone on the raft, so to speak.  Mr. Razumov dropped into a chair, let fall his stick, and propped on his elbows, his head between his hands, stared at me persistently, openly, and continuously, while I signalled the waiter and ordered some beer.  I could not quarrel with this silent inspection very well, because, truth to tell, I felt somewhat guilty of having been sprung on him with some abruptness—­of having “sprung from the ground,” as he expressed it.

While waiting to be served I mentioned that, born from parents settled in St. Petersburg, I had acquired the language as a child.  The town I did not remember, having left it for good as a boy of nine, but in later years I had renewed my acquaintance with the language.  He listened, without as much as moving his eyes the least little bit.  He had to change his position when the beer came, and the instant draining of his glass revived him.  He leaned back in his chair and, folding his arms across his chest, continued to stare at me squarely.  It occurred to me that his clean-shaven, almost swarthy face was really of the very mobile sort, and that the absolute stillness of it was the acquired habit of a revolutionist, of a conspirator everlastingly on his guard against self-betrayal in a world of secret spies.

“But you are an Englishman—­a teacher of English literature,” he murmured, in a voice that was no longer issuing from a parched throat.  “I have heard of you.  People told me you have lived here for years.”

“Quite true.  More than twenty years.  And I have been assisting Miss Haldin with her English studies.”

“You have been reading English poetry with her,” he said, immovable now, like another man altogether, a complete stranger to the man of the heavy and uncertain footfalls a little while ago—­at my elbow.

“Yes, English poetry,” I said.  “But the trouble of which I speak was caused by an English newspaper.”