“I’ve been ill—­shut up in my rooms,” Razumov mumbled through his teeth.

The tall student, raising his shoulders, shoved his hands deep into his pockets.  He had a hairless, square, tallowy chin which trembled slightly as he spoke, and his nose nipped bright red by the sharp air looked like a false nose of painted cardboard between the sallow cheeks.  His whole appearance was stamped with the mark of cold and hunger.  He stalked deliberately at Razumov’s elbow with his eyes on the ground.

“It’s an official statement,” he continued in the same cautious mutter.  “It may be a lie.  But there was somebody arrested between midnight and one in the morning on Tuesday.  This is certain.”

And talking rapidly under the cover of his downcast air, he told Razumov that this was known through an inferior Government clerk employed at the Central Secretariat.  That man belonged to one of the revolutionary circles.  “The same, in fact, I am affiliated to,” remarked the student.

They were crossing a wide quadrangle.  An infinite distress possessed Razumov, annihilated his energy, and before his eyes everything appeared confused and as if evanescent.  He dared not leave the fellow there.  “He may be affiliated to the police,” was the thought that passed through his mind.  “Who could tell?” But eyeing the miserable frost-nipped, famine-struck figure of his companion he perceived the absurdity of his suspicion.

“But I—­you know—­I don’t belong to any circle.  I....”

He dared not say any more.  Neither dared he mend his pace.  The other, raising and setting down his lamentably shod feet with exact deliberation, protested in a low tone that it was not necessary for everybody to belong to an organization.  The most valuable personalities remained outside.  Some of the best work was done outside the organization.  Then very fast, with whispering, feverish lips—­

“The man arrested in the street was Haldin.”

And accepting Razumov’s dismayed silence as natural enough, he assured him that there was no mistake.  That Government clerk was on night duty at the Secretariat.  Hearing a great noise of footsteps in the hall and aware that political prisoners were brought over sometimes at night from the fortress, he opened the door of the room in which he was working, suddenly.  Before the gendarme on duty could push him back and slam the door in his face, he had seen a prisoner being partly carried, partly dragged along the hall by a lot of policemen.  He was being used very brutally.  And the clerk had recognized Haldin perfectly.  Less than half an hour afterwards General T—–­ arrived at the Secretariat to examine that prisoner personally.

“Aren’t you astonished?” concluded the gaunt student.

“No,” said Razumov roughly—­and at once regretted his answer.

“Everybody supposed Haldin was in the provinces—­with his people.  Didn’t you?”

The student turned his big hollow eyes upon Razumov, who said unguardedly—­