nguish of loathing and misery. Kirilin
and Atchmianov were loathsome, but they were only continuing what
he had begun; they were his accomplices and his disciples. This
young weak woman had trusted him more than a brother, and he had
deprived her of her husband, of her friends and of her country, and
had brought her here--to the heat, to fever, and to boredom; and
from day to day she was bound to reflect, like a mirror, his idleness,
his viciousness and falsity--and that was all she had had to fill
her weak, listless, pitiable life. Then he had grown sick of her,
had begun to hate her, but had not had the pluck to abandon her,
and he had tried to entangle her more and more closely in a web of
lies. . . . These men had done the rest.

Laevsky sat at the table, then got up and went to the window; at
one minute he put out the candle and then he lighted it again. He
cursed himself aloud, wept and wailed, and asked forgiveness; several
times he ran to the table in despair, and wrote:

"Mother!"

Except his mother, he had no relations or near friends; but how
could his mother help him? And where was she? He had an impulse to
run to Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, to fall at her feet, to kiss her hands
and feet, to beg her forgiveness; but she was his victim, and he
was afraid of her as though she were dead.

"My life is ruined," he repeated, rubbing his hands. "Why am I still
alive, my God! . . ."

He had cast out of heaven his dim star; it had fallen, and its track
was lost in the darkness of night. It would never return to the sky
again, because life was given only once and never came a second
time. If he could have turned back the days and years of the past,
he would have replaced the falsity with truth, the idleness with
work, the boredom with happiness; he would have given back purity
to those whom he had robbed of it. He would have found God and
goodness, but that was as impossible as to put back the fallen star
into the sky, and because it was impossible he was in despair.

When the storm was over, he sat by the open window and thought
calmly of what was before him. Von Koren would most likely kill
him. The man's clear, cold theory of life justified the destruction
of the rotten and the useless; if it changed at the crucial moment,
it would be the hatred and the repugnance that Laevsky inspired in
him that would save him. If he missed his aim or, in mockery of his
hated opponent, only wounded him, or fired in the air, wh