o one, he began in a shaking
voice:

"Ivan Petrovitch! Let us leave off keeping up this farce with one
another! We have deceived each other long enough! It's too much! I
cannot stand it. You must do as you like, but I cannot! It's hateful
and mean, it's revolting! Do you understand that it is revolting?"

Groholsky spluttered and gasped for breath.

"It's against my principles. And you are an honest man. I love her!
I love her more than anything on earth! You have noticed it and
. . . it's my duty to say this!"

"What am I to say to him?" Ivan Petrovitch wondered.

"We must make an end of it. This farce cannot drag on much longer!
It must be settled somehow."

Groholsky drew a breath and went on:

"I cannot live without her; she feels the same. You are an educated
man, you will understand that in such circumstances your family
life is impossible. This woman is not yours, so . . . in short, I
beg you to look at the matter from an indulgent humane point of
view. . . . Ivan Petrovitch, you must understand at last that I
love her--love her more than myself, more than anything in the
world, and to struggle against that love is beyond my power!"

"And she?" Bugrov asked in a sullen, somewhat ironical tone.

"Ask her; come now, ask her! For her to live with a man she does
not love, to live with you is . . . is a misery!"

"And she?" Bugrov repeated, this time not in an ironical tone.

"She . . . she loves me! We love each other, Ivan Petrovitch! Kill
us, despise us, pursue us, do as you will, but we can no longer
conceal it from you. We are standing face to face--you may judge
us with all the severity of a man whom we . . . whom fate has robbed
of happiness!"

Bugrov turned as red as a boiled crab, and looked out of one eye
at Liza. He began blinking. His fingers, his lips, and his eyelids
twitched. Poor fellow! The eyes of his weeping wife told him that
Groholsky was right, that it was a serious matter.

"Well!" he muttered. "If you. . . . In these days. . . . You are
always. . . ."

"As God is above," Groholsky shrilled in his high tenor, "we
understand you. Do you suppose we have no sense, no feeling? I know
what agonies I am causing you, as God's above! But be indulgent, I
beseech you! We are not to blame. Love is not a crime. No will can
struggle against it. . . . Give her up to me, Ivan Petrovitch! Let
her go with me! Take from me what you will for your sufferings.
Take my life, but give me Liza. I am