d of spilling over.... I was very
happy, especially as I found favour in her eyes. Rudin wanted to make my
beloved's acquaintance, and I myself almost insisted on presenting him.'

'Ah! I see, I see now what it is,' interrupted Alexandra Pavlovna.
'Rudin cut you out with your charmer, and you have never been able to
forgive him.... I am ready to take a wager I am right!'

'You would lose your wager, Alexandra Pavlovna; you are wrong. Rudin did
not cut me out; he did not even try to cut me out; but, all the same,
he put an end to my happiness, though, looking at it in cool blood, I am
ready to thank him for it now. But I nearly went out of my mind at the
time. Rudin did not in the least wish to injure me--quite the contrary!
But through his cursed habit of pinning every emotion--his own and other
people's--with a phrase, as one pins butterflies in a case, he set to
making clear to ourselves our relations to one another, and how we ought
to treat each other, and arbitrarily compelled us to take stock of
our feelings and ideas, praised us and blamed us, even entered into
a correspondence with us--fancy! Well, he succeeded in completely
disconcerting us! I should hardly, even then, have married the young
lady (I had so much sense still left), but, at least, we might have
spent some months happily a _la Paul et Virginie_; but now came strained
relations, misunderstandings of every kind. It ended by Rudin, one fine
morning, arriving at the conviction that it was his sacred duty as a
friend to acquaint the old father with everything--and he did so.'

'Is it possible?' cried Alexandra Pavlovna.

'Yes, and did it with my consent, observe. That's where the wonder comes
in!... I remember even now what a chaos my brain was in; everything
was simply turning round--things looked as they do in a camera
obscura--white seemed black and black white; falsehood was truth, and a
whim was duty.... Ah! even now I feel shame at the recollection of it!
Rudin--he never flagged--not a bit of it! He soared through all sorts of
misunderstandings and perplexities, like a swallow over a pond.'

'And so you parted from the girl?' asked Alexandra Pavlovna, naively
bending her head on one side, and raising her eyebrows.

'We parted--and it was a horrible parting--outrageously awkward and
public, quite unnecessarily public.... I wept myself, and she wept, and
I don't know what passed.... It seemed as though a kind of Gordian knot
had been tied. It h