so pitiful that I found it extremely easy
to control my indignation.

"When you have lived a little longer, Mr. Razumov, you will discover
that no woman is an absolute fool. I am not a feminist, like that
illustrious author, Peter Ivanovitch, who, to say the truth, is not a
little suspect to me...."

He interrupted me, in a surprising note of whispering astonishment.

"Suspect to you! Peter Ivanovitch suspect to you! To you!..."

"Yes, in a certain aspect he is," I said, dismissing my remark lightly.
"As I was saying, Mr. Razumov, when you have lived long enough, you will
learn to discriminate between the noble trustfulness of a nature foreign
to every meanness and the flattered credulity of some women; though even
the credulous, silly as they may be, unhappy as they are sure to be, are
never absolute fools. It is my belief that no woman is ever completely
deceived. Those that are lost leap into the abyss with their eyes open,
if all the truth were known."

"Upon my word," he cried at my elbow, "what is it to me whether women
are fools or lunatics? I really don't care what you think of them. I--I
am not interested in them. I let them be. I am not a young man in a
novel. How do you know that I want to learn anything about women?...
What is the meaning of all this?"

"The object, you mean, of this conversation, which I admit I have forced
upon you in a measure."

"Forced! Object!" he repeated, still keeping half a pace or so behind
me. "You wanted to talk about women, apparently. That's a subject. But
I don't care for it. I have never.... In fact, I have had other
subjects to think about."

"I am concerned here with one woman only--a young girl--the sister of
your dead friend--Miss Haldin. Surely you can think a little of her.
What I meant from the first was that there is a situation which you
cannot be expected to understand."

I listened to his unsteady footfalls by my side for the space of several
strides.

"I think that it may prepare the ground for your next interview with
Miss Haldin if I tell you of it. I imagine that she might have had
something of the kind in her mind when she left us together. I believe
myself authorized to speak. The peculiar situation I have alluded to
has arisen in the first grief and distress of Victor Haldin's execution.
There was something peculiar in the circumstances of his arrest. You no
doubt know the whole truth...."

I felt my arm seized above the elbow, and next instan