it may seem, as though another self, an independent
sharer of his mind, had been able to view his whole person very
distinctly indeed. "This is curious," he thought. After a while he
formulated his opinion of it in the mental ejaculation: "Beastly!"
This disgust vanished before a marked uneasiness. "This is an effect of
nervous exhaustion," he reflected with weary sagacity. "How am I to
go on day after day if I have no more power of resistance--moral
resistance?"

He followed the path at the foot of the terrace. "Moral resistance,
moral resistance;" he kept on repeating these words mentally. Moral
endurance. Yes, that was the necessity of the situation. An immense
longing to make his way out of these grounds and to the other end of the
town, of throwing himself on his bed and going to sleep for hours, swept
everything clean out of his mind for a moment. "Is it possible that I am
but a weak creature after all?" he asked himself, in sudden alarm. "Eh!
What's that?"

He gave a start as if awakened from a dream. He even swayed a little
before recovering himself.

"Ah! You stole away from us quietly to walk about here," he said.

The lady companion stood before him, but how she came there he had not
the slightest idea. Her folded arms were closely cherishing the cat.

"I have been unconscious as I walked, it's a positive fact," said
Razumov to himself in wonder. He raised his hat with marked civility.

The sallow woman blushed duskily. She had her invariably scared
expression, as if somebody had just disclosed to her some terrible news.
But she held her ground, Razumov noticed, without timidity. "She is
incredibly shabby," he thought. In the sunlight her black costume looked
greenish, with here and there threadbare patches where the stuff seemed
decomposed by age into a velvety, black, furry state. Her very hair and
eyebrows looked shabby. Razumov wondered whether she were sixty years
old. Her figure, though, was young enough. He observed that she did not
appear starved, but rather as if she had been fed on unwholesome scraps
and leavings of plates.

Razumov smiled amiably and moved out of her way. She turned her head to
keep her scared eyes on him.

"I know what you have been told in there," she affirmed, without
preliminaries. Her tone, in contrast with her manner, had an
unexpectedly assured character which put Razumov at his ease.

"Do you? You must have heard all sorts of talk on many occasions in
there."