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.  To mention him at all would mean imprisonment for the “bright soul,” perhaps cruel floggings, and in the end a journey to Siberia in chains.  Razumov, who had beaten Ziemianitch, felt for him now a vague, remorseful tenderness.

The General, giving way for the first time to his secret sentiments, exclaimed contemptuously—­

“And you say he came in to make you this confidence like this—­for nothing—­a propos des bottes.”

Razumov felt danger in the air.  The merciless suspicion of despotism had spoken openly at last.  Sudden fear sealed Razumov’s lips.  The silence of the room resembled now the silence of a deep dungeon, where time does not count, and a suspect person is sometimes forgotten for ever.  But the Prince came to the rescue.

“Providence itself has led the wretch in a moment of mental aberration to seek Mr. Razumov on the strength of some old, utterly misinterpreted exchange of ideas—­some sort of idle speculative conversation—­months ago—­I am told—­and completely forgotten till now by Mr. Razumov.”

“Mr. Razumov,” queried the General meditatively, after a short silence, “do you often indulge in speculative conversation?”

“No, Excellency,” answered Razumov, coolly, in a sudden access of self-confidence.  “I am a man of deep convictions.  Crude opinions are in the air.  They are not always worth combating.  But even the silent contempt of a serious mind may be misinterpreted by headlong utopists.”

The General stared from between his hands.  Prince K—–­ murmured—­

“A serious young man. Un esprit superieur.”

“I see that, mon cher Prince,” said the General.  “Mr. Razumov is quite safe with me.  I am interested in him.  He has, it seems, the great and useful quality of inspiring confidence.  What I was wondering at is why the other should mention anything at all—­I mean even the bare fact alone—­if his object was only to obtain temporary shelter for a few hours.  For, after all, nothing was easier than to say nothing about it unless, indeed, he were trying, under a crazy misapprehension of your true sentiments, to enlist your assistance—­eh, Mr. Razumov?”

It seemed to Razumov that the floor was moving slightly.  This grotesque man in a tight uniform was terrible.  It was right that he should be terrible.

“I can see what your Excellency has in your mind.  But I can only answer that I don’t know why.”

“I have nothing in my mind,” murmured the General, with gentle surprise.

“I am his prey—­his helpless prey,” thought Razumov.  The fatigues and the disgusts of that afternoon, the need to forget, the fear which he could not keep off, reawakened his hate for Haldin.