“And he?”

“Be silent!  Be silent!  If you only heard with what delight I called him scoundrel!”

She burst into laughter, frightening me by the wild expression on her face.

“Just think of it!  All his life he embraced only a lie.  And when, deceived, happy, he fell asleep, I looked at him with wide-open eyes, I gnashed my teeth softly, and I felt like pinching him, like sticking him with a pin.”

She burst into laughter again.  It seemed to me that she was driving wedges into my brain.  Clasping my head, I cried: 

“You lie!  You lie to me!”

Indeed, it was easier for me to speak to the ghost than to the woman.  What could I say to her?  My mind was growing dim.  And how could I repulse her when she, full of love and passion, kissed my hands, my eyes, my face?  It was she, my love, my dream, my bitter sorrow!

“I love you!  I love you!”

And I believed her—­I believed her love.  I believed everything.  And once more I felt that my locks were black, and I saw myself young again.  And I knelt before her and wept for a long time, and whispered to her about my sufferings, about the pain of solitude, about a heart cruelly broken, about offended, disfigured, mutilated thoughts.  And, laughing and crying, she stroked my hair.  Suddenly she noticed that it was grey, and she cried strangely: 

“What is it?  And life?  I am an old woman already.”

On leaving me she demanded that I escort her to the threshold, like a young man; and I did.  Before going she said to me: 

“I am coming back to-morrow.  I know my children will deny me—­my daughter is to marry soon.  You and I will go away.  Do you love me?”

“I do.”

“We will go far, far away, my dear.  You wanted to deliver some lectures.  You should not do it.  I don’t like what you say about that iron grate.  You are exhausted, you need a rest.  Shall it be so?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I forgot my veil.  Keep it, keep it as a remembrance of this day.  My dear!”

In the vestibule, in the presence of the sleepy porter, she kissed me.  There was the odour of some new perfume, unlike the perfume with which her letter was scented.  And her coquettish laugh was like a sob as she disappeared behind the glass door.

That night I aroused my servant, ordered him to pack our things, and we went away.  I shall not say where I am at present, but last night and to-night trees were rustling over my head and the rain was beating against my windows.  Here the windows are small, and I feel much better.  I wrote her a rather long letter, the contents of which I shall not reproduce.  I shall never see her again.

But what am I to do?  May the reader pardon these incoherent questions.  They are so natural in a man in my condition.  Besides, I caught an acute rheumatism while travelling, which is most painful and even dangerous for a man of my age, and which does not permit me to reason calmly.  For some reason or another I think very often about my young friend K., who went to an untimely grave.  How does he feel in his new prison?