.

"Who? Everybody," he said impatiently. "You are a materialist, aren't
you?"

"Eh! My dear soul, I have outlived all that nonsense."

"But you must remember the definition of Cabanis: 'Man is a digestive
tube.' I imagine now...."

"I spit on him."

"What? On Cabanis? All right. But you can't ignore the importance of a
good digestion. The joy of life--you know the joy of life?--depends on
a sound stomach, whereas a bad digestion inclines one to scepticism,
breeds black fancies and thoughts of death. These are facts ascertained
by physiologists. Well, I assure you that ever since I came over from
Russia I have been stuffed with indigestible foreign concoctions of the
most nauseating kind--pah!"

"You are joking," she murmured incredulously. He assented in a detached
way.

"Yes. It is all a joke. It's hardly worth while talking to a man like
me. Yet for that very reason men have been known to take their own
life."

"On the contrary, I think it is worth while talking to you."

He kept her in the corner of his eye. She seemed to be thinking out some
scathing retort, but ended by only shrugging her shoulders slightly.

"Shallow talk! I suppose one must pardon this weakness in you," she
said, putting a special accent on the last word. There was something
anxious in her indulgent conclusion.

Razumov noted the slightest shades in this conversation, which he had
not expected, for which he was not prepared. That was it. "I was not
prepared," he said to himself. "It has taken me unawares." It seemed to
him that if he only could allow himself to pant openly like a dog for a
time this oppression would pass away. "I shall never be found prepared,"
he thought, with despair. He laughed a little, saying as lightly as he
could--

"Thanks. I don't ask for mercy." Then affecting a playful uneasiness,
"But aren't you afraid Peter Ivanovitch might suspect us of plotting
something unauthorized together by the gate here?"

"No, I am not afraid. You are quite safe from suspicions while you are
with me, my dear young man." The humorous gleam in her black eyes went
out. "Peter Ivanovitch trusts me," she went on, quite austerely. "He
takes my advice. I am his right hand, as it were, in certain most
important things.... That amuses you what? Do you think I am
boasting?"

"God forbid. I was just only saying to myself that Peter Ivanovitch
seems to have solved the woman question pretty completely."

Even as he spoke he reproach