re a very noble and generous person. I am infinitely grateful
to you. If you ever need my life, come and take it."

Vlassitch talked in a quiet, hollow bass, always on the same droning
note; he was evidently agitated. Pyotr Mihalitch felt it was his
turn to speak, and that to listen and keep silent would really mean
playing the part of a generous and noble simpleton, and that had
not been his idea in coming. He got up quickly and said, breathlessly
in an undertone:

"Listen, Grigory. You know I liked you and could have desired no
better husband for my sister; but what has happened is awful! It's
terrible to think of it!"

"Why is it terrible?" asked Vlassitch, with a quiver in his voice.
"It would be terrible if we had done wrong, but that isn't so."

"Listen, Grigory. You know I have no prejudices; but, excuse my
frankness, to my mind you have both acted selfishly. Of course, I
shan't say so to my sister--it will distress her; but you ought
to know: mother is miserable beyond all description."

"Yes, that's sad," sighed Vlassitch. "We foresaw that, Petrusha,
but what could we have done? Because one's actions hurt other people,
it doesn't prove that they are wrong. What's to be done! Every
important step one takes is bound to distress somebody. If you went
to fight for freedom, that would distress your mother, too. What's
to be done! Any one who puts the peace of his family before everything
has to renounce the life of ideas completely."

There was a vivid flash of lightning at the window, and the lightning
seemed to change the course of Vlassitch's thoughts. He sat down
beside Pyotr Mihalitch and began saying what was utterly beside the
point.

"I have such a reverence for your sister, Petrusha," he said. "When
I used to come and see you, I felt as though I were going to a holy
shrine, and I really did worship Zina. Now my reverence for her
grows every day. For me she is something higher than a wife--yes,
higher!" Vlassitch waved his hands. "She is my holy of holies. Since
she is living with me, I enter my house as though it were a temple.
She is an extraordinary, rare, most noble woman!"

"Well, he's off now!" thought Pyotr Mihalitch; he disliked the word
"woman."

"Why shouldn't you be married properly?" he asked. "How much does
your wife want for a divorce?"

"Seventy-five thousand."

"It's rather a lot. But if we were to negotiate with her?"

"She won't take a farthing less. She is an awful woman, b