“Suddenly you stood before me!  You alone in all the world to whom I must confess.  You fascinated me—­you have freed me from the blindness of anger and hate—­the truth shining in you drew the truth out of me.  Now I have done it; and as I write here, I am in the depths depths of anguish, but there is air to breathe at last—­air!  And, by the by, that old man sprang up from somewhere as I was speaking to you, and raged at me like a disappointed devil.  I suffer horribly, but I am not in despair.  There is only one more thing to do for me.  After that—­if they let me—­I shall go away and bury myself in obscure misery.  In giving Victor Haldin up, it was myself, after all, whom I have betrayed most basely.  You must believe what I say now, you can’t refuse to believe this.  Most basely.  It is through you that I came to feel this so deeply.  After all, it is they and not I who have the right on their side?—­theirs is the strength of invisible powers.  So be it.  Only don’t be deceived, Natalia Victorovna, I am not converted.  Have I then the soul of a slave?  No!  I am independent—­and therefore perdition is my lot.”

On these words, he stopped writing, shut the book, and wrapped it in the black veil he had carried off.  He then ransacked the drawers for paper and string, made up a parcel which he addressed to Miss Haldin, Boulevard des Philosophes, and then flung the pen away from him into a distant corner.

This done, he sat down with the watch before him.  He could have gone out at once, but the hour had not struck yet.  The hour would be midnight.  There was no reason for that choice except that the facts and the words of a certain evening in his past were timing his conduct in the present.  The sudden power Natalia Haldin had gained over him he ascribed to the same cause.  “You don’t walk with impunity over a phantom’s breast,” he heard himself mutter.  “Thus he saves me,” he thought suddenly.  “He himself, the betrayed man.”  The vivid image of Miss Haldin seemed to stand by him, watching him relentlessly.  She was not disturbing.  He had done with life, and his thought even in her presence tried to take an impartial survey.  Now his scorn extended to himself.  “I had neither the simplicity nor the courage nor the self-possession to be a scoundrel, or an exceptionally able man.  For who, with us in Russia, is to tell a scoundrel from an exceptionally able man?...”

He was the puppet of his past, because at the very stroke of midnight he jumped up and ran swiftly downstairs as if confident that, by the power of destiny, the house door would fly open before the absolute necessity of his errand.  And as a matter of fact, just as he got to the bottom of the stairs, it was opened for him by some people of the house coming home late—­two men and a woman.  He slipped out through them into the street, swept then by a fitful gust of wind.  They were, of course, very much startled.  A flash of lightning enabled them to observe him walking away quickly.  One of the men shouted, and was starting in pursuit, but the woman had recognized him.  “It’s all right.  It’s only that young Russian from the third floor.”  The darkness returned with a single clap of thunder, like a gun fired for a warning of his escape from the prison of lies.