He had long been standing, speaking. The little old man now looked at him fearfully. Lizaveta Prokofyevna cried: "Oh, my God!"

realizing before anyone else, and clasped her hands. Aglaya quickly rushed to him, had time to receive him into her arms, and with horror, her face distorted by pain, heard the wild shout of the "spirit that convulsed and dashed down"⁴¹ the unfortunate man. The sick man lay on the carpet. Someone managed quickly to put a pillow under his head.

No one had expected this. A quarter of an hour later Prince N., Evgeny Pavlovich, and the little old man tried to revive the party, but in another half an hour everybody had gone. There were many words of sympathy uttered, many laments, a few opinions. Ivan Petrovich, among other things, declared that "the young man is a Slav-o-phile,⁴² or something of the sort, but anyhow it's not dangerous." The little old man did not come out with anything. True, afterwards, for the next couple of days, everyone was a bit cross; Ivan Petrovich was even offended, but not greatly. The general-superior was somewhat cold to Ivan Fyodorovich for a while. The "patron" of the family, the dignitary, for his part, also mumbled some admonition to the father of the family, and said flatteringly that he was very, very interested in Aglaya's fate. He was in fact a rather kind man; but among the reasons for his curiosity about the prince, in the course of the evening, had also been the old story between the prince and Nastasya Filippovna; he had heard something about this story and was even very interested; he would even have liked to ask about it.

Belokonsky, on leaving the party, said to Lizaveta Prokofyevna:

"Well, he's both good and bad; and if you want to know my opinion, he's more bad. You can see for yourself what sort of man— a sick man!"

Lizaveta Prokofyevna decided definitively to herself that the fiancé was "impossible," and promised herself during the night that "as long as she lived, the prince was not going to be Aglaya's husband." With that she got up in the morning. But that same day, between noon and one, at lunch, she fell into surprising contradiction with herself.

To one question, though an extremely cautious one, from her sisters, Aglaya suddenly answered coldly but haughtily, as if cutting them off:

"I've never given him any sort of promise, and never in my life considered him my fiancé. He's as much a stranger to me as anyone else."

Lizaveta Prokofyevna suddenly flared up.

"That I did not expect of you," she said bitterly. "As a fiancé he's impossible, I know, and thank God it all worked out this way; but I did not expect such words from you! I thought there would be something else from you. I'd throw out all those people from yesterday and keep him, that's what kind of man he is! . . ."

Here she suddenly stopped, frightened herself at what she had said. But if she had known how unjust she was being at that moment towards her daughter? Everything was already decided in Aglaya's head; she was also waiting for her hour, which was to decide everything, and every hint, every careless touch made a deep wound in her heart.

VIII

For the prince, too, that morning began under the influence of painful forebodings; they might have been explained by his sickly condition, but he was too indefinitely sad, and that was the most tormenting thing for him. True, the facts stood before him, vivid, painful, and biting, but his sadness went beyond anything he recalled and realized; he understood that he could not calm down by himself. The expectation gradually took root in him that something special and definitive was going to happen to him that same day. His fit of the evening before had been a mild one; besides hypochondria, some heaviness in the head and pain in his limbs, he did not feel upset in any other way. His head worked quite distinctly, though his soul was sick. He got up rather late and at once clearly recalled the previous evening; though not quite distinctly, he recalled all the same that about half an hour after the fit he had been brought home. He learned that a messenger had already come from the Epanchins to inquire after his health. Another came at half-past eleven; this pleased him. Vera Lebedev was one of the first who came to visit him and look after him. The moment she saw him, she suddenly burst into tears, but the prince at once calmed her down, and she laughed. He was somehow suddenly struck by the strong compassion this girl felt for him; he seized her hand and kissed it. Vera blushed.

"Ah, don't, don't!" she exclaimed in fear, quickly pulling her hand away.

She soon left in some strange embarrassment. Among other things, she had time to tell him that that morning, at daybreak, her

father had gone running to "the deceased," as he called the general, to find out whether or not he had died in the night, and had heard it said that he would probably die soon. Towards noon Lebedev himself came home and called on the prince, but, essentially, "just for a moment, to inquire after his precious health," and so on, and, besides that, to pay a visit to the "little cupboard." He did nothing but "oh" and "ah," and the prince quickly dismissed him, but all the same the man tried to ask questions about yesterday's fit, though it was obvious that he already knew about it in detail. Kolya stopped to see him, also for a moment; this one was indeed in a hurry and in great and dark anxiety. He began by asking the prince, directly and insistently, to explain everything that had been concealed from him, adding that he had already learned almost everything yesterday. He was strongly and deeply shaken.

With all the possible sympathy that he was capable of, the prince recounted the whole affair, restoring the facts with full exactitude, and he struck the poor boy as if with a thunderbolt. He could not utter a word, and wept silently. The prince sensed that this was one of those impressions that remain forever and mark a permanent break in a young man's life. He hastened to tell him his own view of the affair, adding that in his opinion the old man's death had been caused, mainly, by the horror that remained in his heart after his misdeed, and that not everyone was capable of that. Kolya's eyes flashed as he heard the prince out.

"Worthless Ganka, and Varya, and Ptitsyn! I'm not going to quarrel with them, but our paths are different from this moment on! Ah, Prince, since yesterday I've felt so much that's new; it's a lesson for me! I also consider my mother as directly on my hands now; though she's provided for at Varya's, it's all not right . . ."

He jumped up, remembering that he was expected, hurriedly asked about the state of the prince's health and, having heard the answer, suddenly added hastily:

"Is there anything else? I heard yesterday . . . (though I have no right), but if you ever need a faithful servant in anything, he's here before you. It seems neither of us is entirely happy, isn't it so? But . . . I'm not asking, I'm not asking . . ."

He left, and the prince began to ponder still more deeply: everyone was prophesying unhappiness, everyone had already drawn conclusions, everyone looked as if they knew something, and something that he did not know; Lebedev asks questions, Kolya hints outright, and Vera weeps. At last he waved his hand in vexation:

"Cursed, morbid insecurity," he thought. His face brightened when, past one o'clock, he saw the Epanchins coming to call on him "for a moment." They indeed dropped in for a moment. Lizaveta Prokofyevna, getting up from lunch, announced that they were all going for a walk right then and together. The information was given in the form of an order, abruptly, drily, without explanations. They all went out—that is, mama, the girls, and Prince Shch. Lizaveta Prokofyevna went straight in the opposite direction from the one they took every day. They all understood what it meant, and they all kept silent, fearing to annoy the mother, while she, as if to shelter herself from reproaches and objections, walked ahead of them all without looking back. Finally Adelaida observed that there was no need to run like that during a stroll and that there was no keeping up with mother.