, lived, pen in
hand, there is the sincerity of the attempt to grapple by the same means
with another profounder knowledge. After some passages which have been
already made use of in the building up of this narrative, or add nothing
new to the psychological side of this disclosure (there is even one more
allusion to the silver medal in this last entry), comes a page and
a half of incoherent writing where his expression is baffled by the
novelty and the mysteriousness of that side of our emotional life to
which his solitary existence had been a stranger. Then only he begins
to address directly the reader he had in his mind, trying to express in
broken sentences, full of wonder and awe, the sovereign (he uses that
very word) power of her person over his imagination, in which lay the
dormant seed of her brother's words.

"... The most trustful eyes in the world--your brother said of you
when he was as well as a dead man already. And when you stood before me
with your hand extended, I remembered the very sound of his voice, and
I looked into your eyes--and that was enough. I knew that something had
happened, but I did not know then what.... But don't be deceived,
Natalia Victorovna. I believed that I had in my breast nothing but an
inexhaustible fund of anger and hate for you both. I remembered that he
had looked to you for the perpetuation of his visionary soul. He, this
man who had robbed me of my hard-working, purposeful existence. I, too,
had my guiding idea; and remember that, amongst us, it is more difficult
to lead a life of toil and self-denial than to go out in the street and
kill from conviction. But enough of that. Hate or no hate, I felt at
once that, while shunning the sight of you, I could never succeed in
driving away your image. I would say, addressing that dead man, 'Is
this the way you are going to haunt me?' It is only later on that I
understood--only to-day, only a few hours ago. What could I have known
of what was tearing me to pieces and dragging the secret for ever to
my lips? You were appointed to undo the evil by making me betray myself
back into truth and peace. You! And you have done it in the same way,
too, in which he ruined me: by forcing upon me your confidence. Only
what I detested him for, in you ended by appearing noble and exalted.
But, I repeat, be not deceived. I was given up to evil. I exulted in
having induced that silly innocent fool to steal his father's money. He
was a fool, but not