distance I saw black shadows in the darkness; I ran after them and examined each passer-by carefully as I overtook them. So I ran on to the cross-roads.
“People are not angry with the insane,” suddenly flashed through my mind, “but Tatyana was wild with rage at him, so he’s not mad at all. . . .” Oh, it seemed to me all the time that it was symbolic, and that he was bent on putting an end to everything as he did to the ikon, and showing that to us, to mother, and all. But that second self was unmistakably beside him, too; of that there could be no doubt. . . .
3
He was nowhere to be found, however, and I could not run to him. It was difficult to believe that he would have simply gone home. Suddenly an idea flashed upon me and I rushed off to Anna Andreyevna.
Anna Andreyevna had just returned, and I was shown up at once. I went in, controlling myself as far as I could. Without sitting down, I at once described to her the scene which had just taken place, that is the “second self.” I shall never forget the greedy but pitilessly composed and self-complacent curiosity with which she listened, also standing, and I shall never forgive her for it.
“Where is he? Perhaps you know?” I ended, insistently. “Tatyana Pavlovna sent me to you yesterday. . . .”
“I sent for you, too, yesterday. Yesterday he was at Tsarskoe Syelo; he came to see me, too. And now” (she looked at her watch), “now it is seven o’clock. . . . So he’s pretty sure to be at home.”
“I see that you know all about it — so tell me, tell me,” I cried.
“I know a good deal; but I don’t know everything. Of course, there’s no reason to conceal it from you. . . .” She scanned me with a strange glance, smiling and as though deliberating. “Yesterday morning, in answer to her letter, he made Katerina Nikolaevna a formal offer of marriage.”
“That’s false,” I said, opening my eyes wide.
“The letter went through my hands; I took it to her myself, unopened. This time he behaved ‘chivalrously’ and concealed nothing from me.”
“Anna Andreyevna, I can’t understand it!”
“Of course, it’s hard to understand it, but it’s like a gambler who stakes his last crown, while he has a loaded pistol ready in his pocket — that’s what his offer amounts to. It’s ten to one she won’t accept his offer; but still he’s reckoning on that tenth chance, and I confess that’s very curious; I imagine, though, that it may be a case of frenzy, that ‘second self,’ as you said so well just now.”
“And you laugh? And am I really to believe that the letter was given through you? Why, you are the fiancee of her father? Spare me, Anna Andreyevna!”
“He asked me to sacrifice my future to his happiness, though he didn’t really ask; it was all done rather silently. I simply read it all in his eyes. Oh, my goodness, what will he do next! Why, he went to Konigsberg to ask your mother’s leave to marry Katerina Nikolaevna’s step-daughter. That’s very like his pitching on me for his go- between and confidante yesterday.”
She was rather pale. But her calmness was only exaggerated sarcasm. Oh, I forgave her much then, as I began to grasp the position. For a minute I pondered; she waited in silence.
“Do you know,” I laughed suddenly, “you delivered the letter because there was not the slightest risk for you, because there’s no chance of a marriage, but what of him? Of her, too? Of course she will reject his offer and then . . . what may not happen then? Where is he now, Anna Andreyevna?” I cried. “Every minute is precious now, any minute there may be trouble!”
“He’s at home. I have told you so. In the letter to Katerina Nikolaevna, which I delivered, he asked her in ANY CASE to grant him an interview in his lodgings to-day at seven o’clock this evening. She promised.”
“She’s going to his lodging? How can that be?”
“Why not, the lodging is Darya Onisimovna’s; they might very well meet there as her guests. . . .”
“But she’s afraid of him. . . . He may kill her.”
Anna Andreyevna only smiled.
“In spite of the terror which I detected in her myself, Katerina Nikolaevna has always from the first cherished a certain reverence and admiration for the nobility of Andrey Petrovitch’s principles and the loftiness of his mind. She is trusting herself to him this once, so as to have done with him for ever. In his letter he gave her the most solemn and chivalrous promise that she should have nothing to fear. . . . In short, I don’t remember the words of the letter, but she trusted herself . . . so to speak, for the last time . . . and so to speak, responding with the same heroic feelings. There may have been a sort of chivalrous rivalry on both sides.”
“But the second self, the second self!” I exclaimed; “besides, he’s out of his mind!”
“Yesterday, when she gave her promise to grant him an interview, Katerina Nikolaevna probably did not conceive of the possibility of that.”
I suddenly turned and was rushing out . . . to him, to them, of course! But from the next room I ran back for a second.
“But, perhaps, that is just what would suit you, that he should kill her!” I cried, and ran out of the house.
I was shaking all over, as though in a fit, but I went into the lodging quietly, through the kitchen, and asked in a whisper to see Darya Onisimovna; she came out at once and fastened a gaze of intense curiosity upon me.
“His honour . . . he’s not at home.”
But in a rapid whisper I explained, bluntly and exactly, that I knew all about it from Anna Andreyevna, and that I had just come from her.
“Darya Onisimovna, where are they?”
“They are in the room where you sat the day before yesterday, at the table.”
“Darya Onisimovna, let me go in!”
“That’s impossible!”
“Not in there, but in the next room. Darya Onisimovna, Anna Andreyevna wishes it, perhaps; if she didn’t wish it, she wouldn’t have told me herself. They won’t hear me . . . she wishes it herself. . . .”
“And if she doesn’t wish it?” said Darya Onisimovna, her eyes still riveted upon me.
“Darya Onisimovna, I remember your Olya; let me in.”
Her lips and chin suddenly began to quiver.
“Dear friend . . . for Olya’s sake . . . for the sake of your feeling . . . don’t desert Anna Andreyevna. My dear! you won’t desert her, will you? You won’t desert her?”
“No, I won’t!”
“Give me your solemn promise, you won’t rush out upon them, and won’t call out if I hide you in there?”
“I swear on my honour, Darya Onisimovna.”
She took me by my coat, led me into a dark room — next to the one where they were sitting — guided me, almost noiselessly, over the soft carpet to the doorway, stationed me at the curtain that hung over it, and lifting the curtain a fraction of an inch showed me them both.
I remained; she went away. Of course, I remained. I knew that I was eavesdropping, spying on other people’s secrets, but I remained. How could I help remaining with the thought of the ‘second self’ in my mind! Why, he had smashed the ikon before my eyes!
4
They were sitting facing one another at the table at which we had yesterday drunk to his “resurrection.” I got a good view of their faces. She was wearing a simple black dress, and was as beautiful and apparently calm as always. He was speaking; she was listening with intense and sympathetic attention. Perhaps there was some trace of timidity in her, too. He was terribly excited. I had come in the middle of their conversation, and so for some time I could make nothing of it. I remember she suddenly asked:
“And I was the cause?”
“No, I was the cause,” he answered; “and you were only innocently guilty. You know that there are the innocently guilty. Those are generally the most unpardonable crimes, and they almost always bring their punishment,” he added, laughing strangely. “And I actually thought for a moment that I had forgotten you and could laugh at my stupid passion . . . but you know that. What is he to me, though, that man you’re going to marry? Yesterday I made you an offer, forgive me for it; it was absurd and yet I had no alternative but that. . . . What could I have done but that absurd thing? I don’t know. . . .”
As he said this, he laughed hopelessly, suddenly lifting his eyes to her; till then he had looked away as he
