“We keep going round and round and never reach the real point.  The real point is that you made a mistake, and you won’t acknowledge it aloud.  You imagined that I was a hero, and that I had some extraordinary ideas and ideals, and it has turned out that I am a most ordinary official, a cardplayer, and have no partiality for ideas of any sort.  I am a worthy representative of the rotten world from which you have run away because you were revolted with its triviality and emptiness.  Recognise it and be just:  don’t be indignant with me, but with yourself, as it is your mistake, and not mine.”

“Yes, I admit I was mistaken.”

“Well, that’s all right, then.  We’ve reached that point at last, thank God.  Now hear something more, if you please:  I can’t rise to your level—­I am too depraved; you can’t descend to my level, either, for you are too exalted.  So there is only one thing left to do. . . .”

“What?” Zinaida Fyodorovna asked quickly, holding her breath and turning suddenly as white as a sheet of paper.

“To call logic to our aid. . . .”

“Georgy, why are you torturing me?” Zinaida Fyodorovna said suddenly in Russian in a breaking voice.  “What is it for?  Think of my misery . . . .”

Orlov, afraid of tears, went quickly into his study, and I don’t know why—­whether it was that he wished to cause her extra pain, or whether he remembered it was usually done in such cases—­he locked the door after him.  She cried out and ran after him with a rustle of her skirt.

“What does this mean?” she cried, knocking at his door.  “What . . . what does this mean?” she repeated in a shrill voice breaking with indignation.  “Ah, so this is what you do!  Then let me tell you I hate you, I despise you!  Everything is over between us now.”

I heard hysterical weeping mingled with laughter.  Something small in the drawing-room fell off the table and was broken.  Orlov went out into the hall by another door, and, looking round him nervously, he hurriedly put on his great-coat and went out.

Half an hour passed, an hour, and she was still weeping.  I remembered that she had no father or mother, no relations, and here she was living between a man who hated her and Polya, who robbed her—­and how desolate her life seemed to me!  I do not know why, but I went into the drawing-room to her.  Weak and helpless, looking with her lovely hair like an embodiment of tenderness and grace, she was in anguish, as though she were ill; she was lying on a couch, hiding her face, and quivering all over.

“Madam, shouldn’t I fetch a doctor?” I asked gently.

“No, there’s no need . . . it’s nothing,” she said, and she looked at me with her tear-stained eyes.  “I have a little headache. . . .  Thank you.”

I went out, and in the evening she was writing letter after letter, and sent me out first to Pekarsky, then to Gruzin, then to Kukushkin, and finally anywhere I chose, if only I could find Orlov and give him the letter.  Every time I came back with the letter she scolded me, entreated me, thrust money into my hand—­as though she were in a fever.  And all the night she did not sleep, but sat in the drawing-room, talking to herself.