“Question you?  That’s very likely.”

She smiled, half serious.

“Well—­and what shall I say to him?”

“I don’t know.  You may tell him of your discovery.”

“What’s that?”

“Why—­my lack of love for....”

“Oh!  That’s between ourselves,” she interrupted, it was hard to say whether in jest or earnest.

“I see that you want to tell Peter Ivanovitch something in my favour,” said Razumov, with grim playfulness.  “Well, then, you can tell him that I am very much in earnest about my mission.  I mean to succeed.”

“You have been given a mission!” she exclaimed quickly.

“It amounts to that.  I have been told to bring about a certain event.”

She looked at him searchingly.

“A mission,” she repeated, very grave and interested all at once.  “What sort of mission?”

“Something in the nature of propaganda work.”

“Ah!  Far away from here?”

“No.  Not very far,” said Razumov, restraining a sudden desire to laugh, although he did not feel joyous in the least.

“So!” she said thoughtfully.  “Well, I am not asking questions.  It’s sufficient that Peter Ivanovitch should know what each of us is doing.  Everything is bound to come right in the end.”

“You think so?”

“I don’t think, young man.  I just simply believe it.”

“And is it to Peter Ivanovitch that you owe that faith?”

She did not answer the question, and they stood idle, silent, as if reluctant to part with each other.

“That’s just like a man,” she murmured at last.  “As if it were possible to tell how a belief comes to one.”  Her thin Mephistophelian eyebrows moved a little.  “Truly there are millions of people in Russia who would envy the life of dogs in this country.  It is a horror and a shame to confess this even between ourselves.  One must believe for very pity.  This can’t go on.  No!  It can’t go on.  For twenty years I have been coming and going, looking neither to the left nor to the right....  What are you smiling to yourself for?  You are only at the beginning.  You have begun well, but you just wait till you have trodden every particle of yourself under your feet in your comings and goings.  For that is what it comes to.  You’ve got to trample down every particle of your own feelings; for stop you cannot, you must not.  I have been young, too—­but perhaps you think that I am complaining-eh?”

“I don’t think anything of the sort,” protested Razumov indifferently.

“I dare say you don’t, you dear superior creature.  You don’t care.”

She plunged her fingers into the bunch of hair on the left side, and that brusque movement had the effect of setting the Tyrolese hat straight on her head.  She frowned under it without animosity, in the manner of an investigator.  Razumov averted his face carelessly.