Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/109

Rh stead crossed and shot forth radiant beams, concealing his eyes and a part of his face.

Suddenly his eyes appeared again, and round his lips played a disdainful, scoffing smile. I understood that he tested his hypnotic power on me. I decided not to look at him any more, and I succeeded in my resolve. Leaving the car, I had to pass the stranger. He touched my arm and said:

"I know you're a journalist. And you don't want to look at me? Why? I am Rasputin, Gregor Rasputin, the 'man of God.'"

Such was my first encounter. The second was semimystical. There was an exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts in Petersburg, where crowds were thronging and pressing in front of a sad, unfinished picture of the well-known Russian painter, Nicolai Rayevski. The picture represented the portrait of a tall, lean man in a black, semi-ecclesiastical habit, a thin, emaciated face, with long black hair falling down the forehead, and a dishevelled black beard. The picture was marked in the catalogue: "No. 144. The Portrait of an Unknown Man."

But the attention of the crowd was riveted, not by the habit, the face and the black hair, not even by the undefined mysteriousness of the portrait. One and all were looking into the black, piercing eyes, vivid and watchful, like the eyes of an animal preparing for a sudden and dangerous assault. When in turn I looked, approaching the portrait, the eyes vanished behind the