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Not while he was driving them, however; but still there was a suspicion against the fellow of having given a hint to the police and... The woman revolutionist checked herself suddenly. "And you? Have you ever heard your friend refer to a certain Ziemianitch?" Razumov was ready for the name. He had been looking out for the question. "When it comes I shall own up," he had said to himself.
This theory also rendered intelligible the protection of the distinguished nobleman. All this, however, had never been investigated maliciously or otherwise. No one knew or cared who the nobleman in question was. Razumov received a modest but very sufficient allowance from the hands of an obscure attorney, who seemed to act as his guardian in some measure.
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.
"Before what?" shouted Razumov, advancing at the woman, who looked astonished but stood her ground. "Before.... Oh! Of course, it was before! How could it have been after? Only a few hours before." "And he spoke of him favourably?" "With enthusiasm! The horses of Ziemianitch! The free soul of Ziemianitch!"
The General, with his elbows on the desk, took his head between his hands. "Yes. Yes. I am thinking it out.... How long is it since you left him at your rooms, Mr. Razumov?" Razumov mentioned the hour which nearly corresponded with the time of his distracted flight from the big slum house. He had made up his mind to keep Ziemianitch out of the affair completely.
"Am I expected then to have love as well as convictions?" She shrugged her shoulders. "You know very well what I mean. People have been thinking you not quite whole-hearted. I have heard that opinion from one side and another. But I have understood you at the end of the first day...." Razumov interrupted her, speaking steadily. "I assure you that your perspicacity is at fault here."
It threw out into an astonishing relief the unwrinkled face, the brilliant black glance, the upright compact figure, the simple, brisk self-possession of the mature personality as though in her revolutionary pilgrimage she had discovered the secret, not of everlasting youth, but of everlasting endurance. How un-Russian she looked, thought Razumov.
Razumov got up at his usual hour and spent the morning within the University buildings listening to the lectures and working for some time in the library. He heard the first vague rumour of something in the way of bomb-throwing at the table of the students' ordinary, where he was accustomed to eat his two o'clock dinner.
"Come, Kirylo Sidorovitch what are you doing?" Razumov turned his head and looked at him in silence. He was not in the least disconcerted. Councillor Mikulin's arms were stretched out on the table before him and his body leaned forward a little with an effort of his dim gaze. "Was I actually going to clear out like this?" Razumov wondered at himself with an impassive countenance.
"To deceive the police naturally," said Razumov savagely.... "What is all this mockery? Of course you can send me straight from this room to Siberia. That would be intelligible. To what is intelligible I can submit. But I protest against this comedy of persecution. The whole affair is becoming too comical altogether for my taste. A comedy of errors, phantoms, and suspicions.
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