the middle of the little room. The two candles served only to light
up a swarthy yellow face with a half-open mouth and sharp nose.
Billows of muslin were mingled in disorder from the face to the
tips of the two shoes, and from among the billows peeped out two
pale motionless hands, holding a wax cross. The dark gloomy corners
of the little drawing-room, the ikons behind the coffin, the coffin
itself, everything except the softly glimmering lights, were still
as death, as the tomb itself.

"How strange!" I thought, dumbfoundered by the unexpected panorama
of death. "Why this haste? The lodger has hardly had time to hang
himself, or shoot himself, and here is the coffin already!"

I looked round. On the left there was a door with a glass panel;
on the right a lame hat-stand with a shabby fur coat on it. . . .

"Water. . . ." I heard a moan.

The moan came from the left, beyond the door with the glass panel.
I opened the door and walked into a little dark room with a solitary
window, through which there came a faint light from a street lamp
outside.

"Is anyone here?" I asked.

And without waiting for an answer I struck a match. This is what I
saw while it was burning. A man was sitting on the blood-stained
floor at my very feet. If my step had been a longer one I should
have trodden on him. With his legs thrust forward and his hands
pressed on the floor, he was making an effort to raise his handsome
face, which was deathly pale against his pitch-black beard. In the
big eyes which he lifted upon me, I read unutterable terror, pain,
and entreaty. A cold sweat trickled in big drops down his face.
That sweat, the expression of his face, the trembling of the hands
he leaned upon, his hard breathing and his clenched teeth, showed
that he was suffering beyond endurance. Near his right hand in a
pool of blood lay a revolver.

"Don't go away," I heard a faint voice when the match had gone out.
"There's a candle on the table."

I lighted the candle and stood still in the middle of the room not
knowing what to do next. I stood and looked at the man on the floor,
and it seemed to me that I had seen him before.

"The pain is insufferable," he whispered, "and I haven't the strength
to shoot myself again. Incomprehensible lack of will."

I flung off my overcoat and attended to the sick man. Lifting him
from the floor like a baby, I laid him on the American-leather
covered sofa and carefully undressed him. He was shiverin