“Yes.  There’s no mistake.  My correspondent was as familiar with Haldin’s personal appearance as with your own,” the woman affirmed decisively.

“It’s the red-nosed fellow beyond a doubt,” Razumov said to himself, with reawakened uneasiness.  Had his own visit to that accursed house passed unnoticed?  It was barely possible.  Yet it was hardly probable.  It was just the right sort of food for the popular gossip that gaunt busybody had been picking up.  But the letter did not seem to contain any allusion to that.  Unless she had suppressed it.  And, if so, why?  If it had really escaped the prying of that hunger-stricken democrat with a confounded genius for recognizing people from description, it could only be for a time.  He would come upon it presently and hasten to write another letter—­and then!

For all the envenomed recklessness of his temper, fed on hate and disdain, Razumov shuddered inwardly.  It guarded him from common fear, but it could not defend him from disgust at being dealt with in any way by these people.  It was a sort of superstitious dread.  Now, since his position had been made more secure by their own folly at the cost of Ziemianitch, he felt the need of perfect safety, with its freedom from direct lying, with its power of moving amongst them silent, unquestioning, listening, impenetrable, like the very fate of their crimes and their folly.  Was this advantage his already?  Or not yet?  Or never would be?

“Well, Sophia Antonovna,” his air of reluctant concession was genuine in so far that he was really loath to part with her without testing her sincerity by a question it was impossible to bring about in any way; “well, Sophia Antonovna, if that is so, then—­”

“The creature has done justice to himself,” the woman observed, as if thinking aloud.

“What?  Ah yes!  Remorse,” Razumov muttered, with equivocal contempt.

“Don’t be harsh, Kirylo Sidorovitch, if you have lost a friend.”  There was no hint of softness in her tone, only the black glitter of her eyes seemed detached for an instant from vengeful visions.  “He was a man of the people.  The simple Russian soul is never wholly impenitent.  It’s something to know that.”

“Consoling?” insinuated Razumov, in a tone of inquiry.

“Leave off railing,” she checked him explosively.  “Remember, Razumov, that women, children, and revolutionists hate irony, which is the negation of all saving instincts, of all faith, of all devotion, of all action.  Don’t rail!  Leave off....  I don’t know how it is, but there are moments when you are abhorrent to me....”

She averted her face.  A languid silence, as if all the electricity of the situation had been discharged in this flash of passion, lasted for some time.  Razumov had not flinched.  Suddenly she laid the tips of her fingers on his sleeve.

“Don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” he said very quietly.

He was proud to feel that she could read nothing on his face.  He was really mollified, relieved, if only for a moment, from an obscure oppression.  And suddenly he asked himself, “Why the devil did I go to that house?  It was an imbecile thing to do.”