He avoided with difficulty a burst of Mephistophelian laughter.  Haldin, very pale, raised himself on his elbow.

“And the surprises of life,” went on Razumov, after glancing at the other uneasily.  “Just consider their astonishing nature.  A mysterious impulse induces you to come here.  I don’t say you have done wrong.  Indeed, from a certain point of view you could not have done better.  You might have gone to a man with affections and family ties.  You have such ties yourself.  As to me, you know I have been brought up in an educational institute where they did not give us enough to eat.  To talk of affection in such a connexion—­you perceive yourself....  As to ties, the only ties I have in the world are social.  I must get acknowledged in some way before I can act at all.  I sit here working....  And don’t you think I am working for progress too?  I’ve got to find my own ideas of the true way....  Pardon me,” continued Razumov, after drawing breath and with a short, throaty laugh, “but I haven’t inherited a revolutionary inspiration together with a resemblance from an uncle.”

He looked again at his watch and noticed with sickening disgust that there were yet a good many minutes to midnight.  He tore watch and chain off his waistcoat and laid them on the table well in the circle of bright lamplight.  Haldin, reclining on his elbow, did not stir.  Razumov was made uneasy by this attitude.  “What move is he meditating over so quietly?” he thought.  “He must be prevented.  I must keep on talking to him.”

He raised his voice.

“You are a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin—­I don’t know what—­to no end of people.  I am just a man.  Here I stand before you.  A man with a mind.  Did it ever occur to you how a man who had never heard a word of warm affection or praise in his life would think on matters on which you would think first with or against your class, your domestic tradition—­your fireside prejudices?...  Did you ever consider how a man like that would feel?  I have no domestic tradition.  I have nothing to think against.  My tradition is historical.  What have I to look back to but that national past from which you gentlemen want to wrench away your future?  Am I to let my intelligence, my aspirations towards a better lot, be robbed of the only thing it has to go upon at the will of violent enthusiasts?  You come from your province, but all this land is mine—­or I have nothing.  No doubt you shall be looked upon as a martyr some day—­a sort of hero—­a political saint.  But I beg to be excused.  I am content in fitting myself to be a worker.  And what can you people do by scattering a few drops of blood on the snow?  On this Immensity.  On this unhappy Immensity!  I tell you,” he cried, in a vibrating, subdued voice, and advancing one step nearer the bed, “that what it needs is not a lot of haunting phantoms that I could walk through—­but a man!”

Haldin threw his arms forward as if to keep him off in horror.