? That's
the way to treat these meddlesome persons. Is it possible that he still
stands behind my back, waiting?"

Razumov felt a faint chill run down his spine. It was not fear. He was
certain that it was not fear--not fear for himself--but it was, all the
same, a sort of apprehension as if for another, for some one he
knew without being able to put a name on the personality. But the
recollection that the officious Englishman had a train to meet
tranquillized him for a time. It was too stupid to suppose that he
should be wasting his time in waiting. It was unnecessary to look round
and make sure.

But what did the man mean by his extraordinary rigmarole about the
newspaper, and that crazy old woman? he thought suddenly. It was a
damnable presumption, anyhow, something that only an Englishman could
be capable of. All this was a sort of sport for him--the sport of
revolution--a game to look at from the height of his superiority. And
what on earth did he mean by his exclamation, "Won't the truth do?"

Razumov pressed his folded arms to the stone coping over which he was
leaning with force. "Won't the truth do? The truth for the crazy old
mother of the--"

The young man shuddered again. Yes. The truth would do! Apparently
it would do. Exactly. And receive thanks, he thought, formulating the
unspoken words cynically. "Fall on my neck in gratitude, no doubt," he
jeered mentally. But this mood abandoned him at once. He felt sad, as
if his heart had become empty suddenly. "Well, I must be cautious," he
concluded, coming to himself as though his brain had been awakened from
a trance. "There is nothing, no one, too insignificant, too absurd to be
disregarded," he thought wearily. "I must be cautious."

Razumov pushed himself with his hand away from the balustrade and,
retracing his steps along the bridge, walked straight to his lodgings,
where, for a few days, he led a solitary and retired existence. He
neglected Peter Ivanovitch, to whom he was accredited by the Stuttgart
group; he never went near the refugee revolutionists, to whom he had
been introduced on his arrival. He kept out of that world altogether.
And he felt that such conduct, causing surprise and arousing suspicion,
contained an element of danger for himself.

This is not to say that during these few days he never went out. I met
him several times in the streets, but he gave me no recognition.
Once, going home after an evening call on the ladies Haldin, I sa