hich, to
Razumov's startled glance, seemed to proceed from under the steady
spectacles of Peter Ivanovitch, rather than from his lips, which had
hardly moved.

"What of hat? I say thieves! _Voleurs! Voleurs!_"

Razumov was quite confounded by this unexpected clamour, which had in
it something of wailing and croaking, and more than a suspicion of
hysteria.

"_Voleurs! Voleurs! Vol_...."

"No power on earth can rob you of your genius," shouted Peter Ivanovitch
in an overpowering bass, but without stirring, without a gesture of any
kind. A profound silence fell.

Razumov remained outwardly impassive. "What is the meaning of this
performance?" he was asking himself. But with a preliminary sound
of bumping outside some door behind him, the lady companion, in a
threadbare black skirt and frayed blouse, came in rapidly, walking on
her heels, and carrying in both hands a big Russian samovar, obviously
too heavy for her. Razumov made an instinctive movement to help, which
startled her so much that she nearly dropped her hissing burden. She
managed, however, to land it on the table, and looked so frightened that
Razumov hastened to sit down. She produced then, from an adjacent room,
four glass tumblers, a teapot, and a sugar-basin, on a black iron tray.

The rasping voice asked from the sofa abruptly--

"_Les gateaux_? Have you remembered to bring the cakes?"

Peter Ivanovitch, without a word, marched out on to the landing, and
returned instantly with a parcel wrapped up in white glazed paper, which
he must have extracted from the interior of his hat. With imperturbable
gravity he undid the string and smoothed the paper open on a part of the
table within reach of Madame de S--'s hand. The lady companion poured
out the tea, then retired into a distant corner out of everybody's
sight. From time to time Madame de S-- extended a claw-like hand,
glittering with costly rings, towards the paper of cakes, took up one
and devoured it, displaying her big false teeth ghoulishly. Meantime she
talked in a hoarse tone of the political situation in the Balkans. She
built great hopes on some complication in the peninsula for arousing
a great movement of national indignation in Russia against "these
thieves--thieves thieves."

"You will only upset yourself," Peter Ivanovitch interposed, raising
his glassy gaze. He smoked cigarettes and drank tea in silence,
continuously. When he had finished a glass, he flourished his hand
above his s