You might think he was one of these nervous
sensitives that come to a bad end. And yet," she went on, after a short,
reflective pause and changing the mode of her address, "and yet I
have just learned something which makes me think that you are a man of
character, Kirylo Sidorovitch. Yes! indeed--you are."
The mysterious positiveness of this assertion startled Razumov. Their
eyes met. He looked away and, through the bars of the rusty gate, stared
at the clean, wide road shaded by the leafy trees. An electric tramcar,
quite empty, ran along the avenue with a metallic rustle. It seemed to
him he would have given anything to be sitting inside all alone. He
was inexpressibly weary, weary in every fibre of his body, but he had
a reason for not being the first to break off the conversation. At any
instant, in the visionary and criminal babble of revolutionists, some
momentous words might fall on his ear; from her lips, from anybody's
lips. As long as he managed to preserve a clear mind and to keep down
his irritability there was nothing to fear. The only condition of
success and safety was indomitable will-power, he reminded himself.
He longed to be on the other side of the bars, as though he were
actually a prisoner within the grounds of this centre of revolutionary
plots, of this house of folly, of blindness, of villainy and crime.
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