of tea forgotten on every table, the two Laspara daughters prowling about enigmatically silent, sleepy-eyed, corsetless, and generally, in their want of shape and the disorder of their rumpled attire, resembling old dolls; the great but obscure Julius, his feet twisted round his three-legged stool, always ready to receive the visitors, the pen instantly dropped, the body screwed round with a striking display of the lofty brow and of the great austere beard.  When he got down from his stool it was as though he had descended from the heights of Olympus.  He was dwarfed by his daughters, by the furniture, by any caller of ordinary stature.  But he very seldom left it, and still more rarely was seen walking in broad daylight.

It must have been some matter of serious importance which had driven him out in that direction that afternoon.  Evidently he wished to be amiable to that young man whose arrival had made some sensation in the world of political refugees.  In Russian now, which he spoke, as he spoke and wrote four or five other European languages, without distinction and without force (other than that of invective), he inquired if Razumov had taken his inscriptions at the University as yet.  And the young man, shaking his head negatively—­

“There’s plenty of time for that.  But, meantime, are you not going to write something for us?”

He could not understand how any one could refrain from writing on anything, social, economic, historical—­anything.  Any subject could be treated in the right spirit, and for the ends of social revolution.  And, as it happened, a friend of his in London had got in touch with a review of advanced ideas.  “We must educate, educate everybody—­develop the great thought of absolute liberty and of revolutionary justice.”

Razumov muttered rather surlily that he did not even know English.

“Write in Russian.  We’ll have it translated There can be no difficulty.  Why, without seeking further, there is Miss Haldin.  My daughters go to see her sometimes.”  He nodded significantly.  “She does nothing, has never done anything in her life.  She would be quite competent, with a little assistance.  Only write.  You know you must.  And so good-bye for the present.”

He raised his arm and went on.  Razumov backed against the low wall, looked after him, spat violently, and went on his way with an angry mutter—­

“Cursed Jew!”

He did not know anything about it.  Julius Laspara might have been a Transylvanian, a Turk, an Andalusian, or a citizen of one of the Hanse towns for anything he could tell to the contrary.  But this is not a story of the West, and this exclamation must be recorded, accompanied by the comment that it was merely an expression of hate and contempt, best adapted to the nature of the feelings Razumov suffered from at the time.  He was boiling with rage, as though he had been grossly insulted.  He walked as if blind, following instinctively the shore of the diminutive