We shall
certainly meet once more. It may be some little time, though, before
we do. Till then may Heaven send you fruitful reflections!" Once in the
street, Razumov started off rapidly, without caring for the direction.
At first he thought of nothing; but in a little while the consciousness
of his position presented itself to him as something so ugly, dangerous,
and absurd, the difficulty of ever freeing himself from the toils of
that complication so insoluble, that the idea of going back and, as he
termed it to himself, confessing to Councillor Mikulin flashed through
his mind.
Go back! What for? Confess! To what? "I have been speaking to him with
the greatest openness," he said to himself with perfect truth. "What
else could I tell him? That I have undertaken to carry a message to that
brute Ziemianitch? Establish a false complicity and destroy what chance
of safety I have won for nothing--what folly!"
Yet he could not defend himself from fancying that Councillor Mikulin
was, perhaps, the only man in the world able to understand his conduct.
To be understood appeared extremely fascinating.
On the way home he had to stop several times; all his strength seemed to
run out of his limbs; and in the movement of the busy streets, isolated
as if in a desert, he remained suddenly motionless for a minute or so
before he could proceed on his way.
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