endly manner with an evident conciliatory intention. And it was
still about the famous letter, referring to various minute details
given by her informant, who had never seen Ziemianitch. The "victim of
remorse" had been buried several weeks before her correspondent began
frequenting the house. It--the house--contained very good revolutionary
material. The spirit of the heroic Haldin had passed through these dens
of black wretchedness with a promise of universal redemption from all
the miseries that oppress mankind. Razumov listened without hearing,
gnawed by the newborn desire of safety with its independence from that
degrading method of direct lying which at times he found it almost
impossible to practice.

No. The point he wanted to hear about could never come into this
conversation. There was no way of bringing it forward. He regretted
not having composed a perfect story for use abroad, in which his fatal
connexion with the house might have been owned up to. But when he left
Russia he did not know that Ziemianitch had hanged himself. And, anyway,
who could have foreseen this woman's "informant" stumbling upon that
particular slum, of all the slums awaiting destruction in the purifying
flame of social revolution? Who could have foreseen? Nobody! "It's a
perfect, diabolic surprise," thought Razumov, calm-faced in his attitude
of inscrutable superiority, nodding assent to Sophia Antonovna's remarks
upon the psychology of "the people," "Oh yes--certainly," rather
coldly, but with a nervous longing in his fingers to tear some sort of
confession out of her throat.

Then, at the very last, on the point of separating, the feeling of
relaxed tension already upon him, he heard Sophia Antonovna allude to
the subject of his uneasiness. How it came about he could only guess,
his mind being absent at the moment, but it must have sprung from Sophia
Antonovna's complaints of the illogical absurdity of the people. For
instance--that Ziemianitch was notoriously irreligious, and yet, in the
last weeks of his life, he suffered from the notion that he had been
beaten by the devil.

"The devil," repeated Razumov, as though he had not heard aright.

"The actual devil. The devil in person. You may well look astonished,
Kirylo Sidorovitch. Early on the very night poor Haldin was taken,
a complete stranger turned up and gave Ziemianitch a most fearful
thrashing while he was lying dead-drunk in the stable. The wretched
creature's body was