I remember well that the noose flung around my neck did not terrify me, although I knew that the game had been lost irretrievably. I believe that I did not waste a minute in hesitating as to which decision to make. I had made it the moment I heard Simonov say: “Take the place of Popenko.” I recollect well that I was myself surprised at the ease and speed with which this resolution was taken—it occurred as naturally and simply as arises the desire to sleep, to take a walk, to get a drink of water. I sat in the dark little room, listened to the rain pattering at the window and hearkened to a voice within me that should have protested against my decision. Nothing protested.

“What did it mean? Where did this calmness come from, what did it signify? Why do I not feel the same repugnance towards myself as I felt yesterday towards Popenko? I repeated mentally all the words which are used to describe traitors, remembered all that had been said in print and otherwise about them, nothing seemed to touch or perturb me. It looked as though the man who had only yesterday forced a fellow-creature to commit suicide and today resolved to destroy many other lives, had hidden somewhere, while the other one, puzzled, waited to hear him say something, wanted to learn something about him, was searching for the criminal—and did not find him. There was no criminal. Then shadows of thoughts motivated by curiosity stirred lazily in the brain and queried:

“Am I really going to work for the police and betray my friends to policemen?”

No answer came to that, while the curiosity became sharper and more pressing. I clearly recollect that the prevalent feeling in me in these hours was the feeling of curiosity and astonishment that I felt nothing but that. In this state of mind, that of a man puzzled and curious about himself, I confronted Simonov.

“A wise decision,” he said, having listened to me, and then started to explain with a certain preoccupation, how futile it had been on my part to have caused so much fuss about that clown Popenko.

“The criminal police has got involved in it. Well, well, we’ll arrange all that. According to the rules you’ll have to sign this little paper.”

Unexpectedly to myself I asked: “What do you think—that I just funked it?”

Simonov did not reply at once, he first lit a cigarette from the end of the old one.

“No, that I do not think. You can believe me. But this isn’t the moment to talk of it.”

In spite of that we talked for a long time, about an hour or more, standing in front of each other. I gathered such a queer impression from that talk: with some sharp angle of my brain I understood that Simonov was surprised at the ease and rapidity of my resolution no less than I was myself, that he did not trust me, that my calmness annoyed him, puzzled him just as it did me; also I felt that he wanted to frighten me in some way, but understood that nothing was able to frighten me. It seemed to me that all he said was to no purpose. Also without any purpose he suddenly informed me that Colonel Ossipov had always expressed admiration of my sharp and independent intelligence. I asked: “Is he alive?”

“No, he died. He was a fine man.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

Simonov waved away the smoke from his face with a sharp gesture of the hand and added firmly:

“A dreamer, he was. What one calls—a romanticist.”

“Yes, yes,” I agreed again, and said that Popenko had actually hanged himself with his own hands, although at my instigation, of course. Simonov shrugged his shoulders:

“Let it be so.”