This hallucination had such a solidity of aspect that the first movement of Razumov was to reach for his pocket to assure himself that the key of his rooms was there.  But he checked the impulse with a disdainful curve of his lips.  He understood.  His thought, concentrated intensely on the figure left lying on his bed, had culminated in this extraordinary illusion of the sight.  Razumov tackled the phenomenon calmly.  With a stern face, without a check and gazing far beyond the vision, he walked on, experiencing nothing but a slight tightening of the chest.  After passing he turned his head for a glance, and saw only the unbroken track of his footsteps over the place where the breast of the phantom had been lying.

Razumov walked on and after a little time whispered his wonder to himself.

“Exactly as if alive!  Seemed to breathe!  And right in my way too!  I have had an extraordinary experience.”

He made a few steps and muttered through his set teeth—­

“I shall give him up.”

Then for some twenty yards or more all was blank.  He wrapped his cloak closer round him.  He pulled his cap well forward over his eyes.

“Betray.  A great word.  What is betrayal?  They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart.  There must be a moral bond first.  All a man can betray is his conscience.  And how is my conscience engaged here; by what bond of common faith, of common conviction, am I obliged to let that fanatical idiot drag me down with him?  On the contrary—­every obligation of true courage is the other way.”

Razumov looked round from under his cap.

“What can the prejudice of the world reproach me with?  Have I provoked his confidence?  No!  Have I by a single word, look, or gesture given him reason to suppose that I accepted his trust in me?  No!  It is true that I consented to go and see his Ziemianitch.  Well, I have been to see him.  And I broke a stick on his back too—­the brute.”

Something seemed to turn over in his head bringing uppermost a singularly hard, clear facet of his brain.

“It would be better, however,” he reflected with a quite different mental accent, “to keep that circumstance altogether to myself.”

He had passed beyond the turn leading to his lodgings, and had reached a wide and fashionable street.  Some shops were still open, and all the restaurants.  Lights fell on the pavement where men in expensive fur coats, with here and there the elegant figure of a woman, walked with an air of leisure.  Razumov looked at them with the contempt of an austere believer for the frivolous crowd.  It was the world—­those officers, dignitaries, men of fashion, officials, members of the Yacht Club.  The event of the morning affected them all.  What would they say if they knew what this student in a cloak was going to do?

“Not one of them is capable of feeling and thinking as deeply as I can.  How many of them could accomplish an act of conscience?”