hastened to speak at random.

"Yes. Eternity, of course. I, too, can't very well represent it to
myself.... I imagine it, however, as something quiet and dull. There
would be nothing unexpected--don't you see? The element of time would be
wanting."

He pulled out his watch and gazed at it. Haldin turned over on his side
and looked on intently.

Razumov got frightened at this movement. A slippery customer this fellow
with a phantom. It was not midnight yet. He hastened on--

"And unfathomable mysteries! Can you conceive secret places in Eternity?
Impossible. Whereas life is full of them. There are secrets of birth,
for instance. One carries them on to the grave. There is something
comical...but never mind. And there are secret motives of conduct. A
man's most open actions have a secret side to them. That is interesting
and so unfathomable! For instance, a man goes out of a room for a walk.
Nothing more trivial in appearance. And yet it may be momentous. He
comes back--he has seen perhaps a drunken brute, taken particular notice
of the snow on the ground--and behold he is no longer the same man. The
most unlikely things have a secret power over one's thoughts--the grey
whiskers of a particular person--the goggle eyes of another."

Razumov's forehead was moist. He took a turn or two in the room, his
head low and smiling to himself viciously.

"Have you ever reflected on the power of goggle eyes and grey whiskers?
Excuse me. You seem to think I must be crazy to talk in this vein at