"Yesterday, after meeting you, I came home and thought up a painting. Artists all paint Christ according to the Gospel stories; I would paint him differently: I would portray him alone—the disciples did sometimes leave him alone. I would leave only a small child with him. The child would be playing beside him, perhaps telling him something in his child's language. Christ had been listening to him, but now he has become pensive; his hand has inadvertently, forgetfully, remained on the child's blond head. He gazes into the distance, at the horizon; a thought as great as the whole world reposes in his eyes; his face is sad. The child has fallen silent, leaning his elbow on his knees, and, his cheek resting on his hand, has raised his little head and pensively, as children sometimes become pensive, gazes intently at him. The sun is setting . . . That is my painting! You are innocent, and all your perfection is in your innocence. Oh, remember only that! What do you care about my passion for you? You are mine now, I shall be near you all my life ... I shall die soon."

Finally, in the very last letter there was:

"For God's sake, do not think anything about me; do not think, also, that I humiliate myself by writing to you like this or that I am one of those who take pleasure in humiliating themselves, even though it is only out of pride. No, I have my own consolations; but it is hard for me to explain that to you. It would be hard for me to say it clearly even to myself, though it torments me. But I know that I cannot humiliate myself even in a fit of pride. Nor am I capable of self-humiliation out of purity of heart. And that means I do not humiliate myself at all.

"Why do I want to unite the two of you: for your sake or for my own? For my own, naturally, then everything will be resolved

for me, I told myself that long ago ... I have heard that your sister Adelaida once said of my portrait that one could overturn the world with such beauty. But I have renounced the world; do you find it funny to hear that from me, meeting me in lace and diamonds, with drunkards and scoundrels? Pay no attention to that, I almost do not exist now and I know it; God knows what lives in me in place of me. I read that every day in two terrible eyes that constantly look at me, even when they are not before me. Those eyes are silent now (they are always silent), but I know their secret. His house is gloomy, dreary, and there is a secret in it. I am sure that hidden in a drawer he has a razor, wound in silk, like the one that Moscow murderer had; that one also lived in the same house with his mother and also tied silk around his razor in order to cut a certain throat. All the while I was in their house, it seemed to me that somewhere, under the floorboards, maybe even hidden by his father, there was a dead man wrapped in oilcloth, like the one in Moscow, and surrounded in the same way by bottles of Zhdanov liquid,³⁰ I could even show you the corner. He is always silent; but I know he loves me so much that by now he cannot help hating me. Your wedding and my wedding will come together: that is how he and I have decided it. I have no secrets from him. I could kill him out of fear . . . But he will kill me first... he laughed just now and says I'm raving. He knows I'm writing to you."

And there was much, much more of the same sort of raving in these letters. One of them, the second, was on two sheets of stationery, of large format, in small handwriting.

The prince finally left the somber park, in which he had wandered for a long time, as he had the day before. The bright, transparent night seemed brighter than usual to him. "Can it be so early?" he thought. (He had forgotten to take his watch.) Music reached him from somewhere far away. "In the vauxhall, it must be," he thought again, "of course, they didn't go there today." Realizing that, he saw that he was standing right by their dacha; he simply knew he would have to end up there, finally, and with a sinking heart he went onto the terrace. No one met him, the terrace was deserted. He waited a while and then opened the door to the drawing room. "They never close this door," flashed in him, but the drawing room, too, was deserted; it was almost totally dark. He stood perplexed in the middle of the room. Suddenly the door opened and Alexandra Ivanovna came in carrying a candle. Seeing the prince, she was surprised and stopped in front of him as if

questioningly. It was obvious that she was only passing through the room, from one door to the other, not thinking at all of finding anyone there.

"How did you end up here?" she said at last.

"I . . . came by . . ."

"Maman isn't feeling well, and neither is Aglaya. Adelaida's going to bed, and so am I. We spent the whole evening sitting at home alone. Papa and the prince are in Petersburg."

"I've come . . . I've come to you . . . now . . ."

"Do you know what time it is?"

"N-no . . ."

"Half-past twelve. We always go to bed at one."

"Ah, I thought it was . . . half-past nine."

"Never mind!" she laughed. "But why didn't you come earlier? Maybe we were expecting you."

"I . . . thought. . ." he babbled, going out.

"Good-bye! Tomorrow I'll make everybody laugh."

He went down the road that skirted the park to his dacha. His heart was pounding, his thoughts were confused, and everything around him seemed like a dream. And suddenly, just as earlier, both times when he was awakened by the same vision, so the same vision again appeared before him. The same woman came out of the park and stood before him, as if she had been waiting for him there. He shuddered and stopped; she seized his hand and pressed it hard. "No, this is not a vision!"

And so she finally stood before him face to face, for the first time since their parting; she was saying something to him, but he looked at her silently; his heart overflowed and was wrung with pain. Oh, never afterwards could he forget this meeting with her, and he always remembered it with the same pain. She went down on her knees before him right there in the street, as if beside herself; he stepped back in fear, but she tried to catch his hand in order to kiss it, and, just as earlier in his dream, tears glistened now on her long lashes.

"Get up, get up!" he said in a frightened whisper, trying to raise her. "Get up quickly!"

"Are you happy? Are you?" she kept asking. "Tell me just one word, are you happy now? Today, right now? With her? What did she say?"

She would not get up, she did not listen to him; she asked hurriedly and was in a hurry to speak, as though she were being pursued.

"I'm leaving tomorrow, as you told me to. I won't. . . I'm seeing you for the last time, the last! Now it really is the last time!"

"Calm yourself, get up!" he said in despair.

She peered at him greedily, clutching his hands.

"Farewell!" she said at last, stood up, and quickly walked away from him, almost ran. The prince saw that Rogozhin was suddenly beside her, took her arm, and led her away.

"Wait, Prince," cried Rogozhin, "in five minutes I'll come back for a bit."

In five minutes he indeed came back; the prince was waiting for him in the same place.

"I put her in the carriage," he said. "It's been waiting there on the corner since ten o'clock. She just knew you'd spend the whole evening with the other one. I told her exactly what you wrote me today. She won't write to the other one anymore; she promised; and she'll leave here tomorrow, as you wished. She wanted to see you one last time, even though you refused; we waited here in this place for you to go back—over there, on that bench."