With a half-comical shrug of the
shoulders, she gave the remedy up in the face of that abundance.
"It is you, my dear soul, who are flinging yourself at something which
does not exist. What is it? Self-reproach, or what? It's absurd. You
couldn't have gone and given yourself up because your comrade was
taken."
She remonstrated with him reasonably, at some length too. He had nothing
to complain of in his reception. Every new-comer was discussed more or
less. Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.
No one that she could remember had been shown from the first so much
confidence. Soon, very soon, perhaps sooner than he expected, he would
be given an opportunity of showing his devotion to the sacred task of
crushing the Infamy.
Razumov, listening quietly, thought: "It may be that she is trying to
lull my suspicions to sleep. On the other hand, it is obvious that most
of them are fools." He moved aside a couple of paces and, folding his
arms on his breast, leaned back against the stone pillar of the gate.
"As to what remains obscure in the fate of that poor Haldin," Sophia
Antonovna dropped into a slowness of utterance which was to Razumov like
the falling of molten lead drop by drop; "as to that--though no one ever
hinted that either from fear or neglect your conduct has not been what
it should have been--well, I have a bit of intelligence.
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