“I felt inclined to lie down and go to sleep there.”

She clicked her tongue at that symptom, very struck indeed.  Then—­

“But the notebook!  The amazing notebook, man.  You don’t mean to say you had put it in your pocket beforehand!” she cried.

Razumov gave a start.  It might have been a sign of impatience.

“I went home.  Straight home to my rooms,” he said distinctly.

“The coolness of the man!  You dared?”

“Why not?  I assure you I was perfectly calm.  Ha!  Calmer than I am now perhaps.”

“I like you much better as you are now than when you indulge that bitter vein of yours, Razumov.  And nobody in the house saw you return—­eh?  That might have appeared queer.”

“No one,” Razumov said firmly.  “Dvornik, landlady, girl, all out of the way.  I went up like a shadow.  It was a murky morning.  The stairs were dark.  I glided up like a phantom.  Fate?  Luck?  What do you think?”

“I just see it!” The eyes of the woman revolutionist snapped darkly.  “Well—­and then you considered....”

Razumov had it all ready in his head.

“No.  I looked at my watch, since you want to know.  There was just time.  I took that notebook, and ran down the stairs on tiptoe.  Have you ever listened to the pit-pat of a man running round and round the shaft of a deep staircase?  They have a gaslight at the bottom burning night and day.  I suppose it’s gleaming down there now....  The sound dies out—­the flame winks....”

He noticed the vacillation of surprise passing over the steady curiosity of the black eyes fastened on his face as if the woman revolutionist received the sound of his voice into her pupils instead of her ears.  He checked himself, passed his hand over his forehead, confused, like a man who has been dreaming aloud.

“Where could a student be running if not to his lectures in the morning?  At night it’s another matter.  I did not care if all the house had been there to look at me.  But I don’t suppose there was anyone.  It’s best not to be seen or heard.  Aha!  The people that are neither seen nor heard are the lucky ones—­in Russia.  Don’t you admire my luck?”

“Astonishing,” she said.  “If you have luck as well as determination, then indeed you are likely to turn out an invaluable acquisition for the work in hand.”

Her tone was earnest; and it seemed to Razumov that it was speculative, even as though she were already apportioning him, in her mind, his share of the work.  Her eyes were cast down.  He waited, not very alert now, but with the grip of the ever-present danger giving him an air of attentive gravity.  Who could have written about him in that letter from Petersburg?  A fellow student, surely—­some imbecile victim of revolutionary propaganda, some foolish slave of foreign, subversive ideals.  A long, famine-stricken, red-nosed figure presented itself to his mental search.  That must have been the fellow!