myself up to it for a time. Who
could have resisted! You yourself were the prize of it. I sat alone in
my room, planning a life, the very thought of which makes me shudder
now, like a believer who had been tempted to an atrocious sacrilege. But
I brooded ardently over its images. The only thing was that there seemed
to be no air in it. And also I was afraid of your mother. I never knew
mine. I've never known any kind of love. There is something in the mere
word.... Of you, I was not afraid--forgive me for telling you this.
No, not of you. You were truth itself. You could not suspect me. As to
your mother, you yourself feared already that her mind had given way
from grief. Who could believe anything against me? Had not Ziemianitch
hanged himself from remorse? I said to myself, 'Let's put it to the
test, and be done with it once for all.' I trembled when I went in;
but your mother hardly listened to what I was saying to her, and, in a
little while, seemed to have forgotten my very existence. I sat looking
at her. There was no longer anything between you and me. You were
defenceless--and soon, very soon, you would be alone.... I thought of
you. Defenceless. For days you have talked with me--opening your heart.
I remembered the shadow of your eyelashes over your grey trustful eyes.
And your pure forehead! It is low like the forehead of statues--calm,
unstained. It was as if your pure brow bore a light which fell on me,
searched my heart and saved me from ignominy, from ultimate undoing.
And it saved you too. Pardon my presumption. But there was that in your
glances which seemed to tell me that you.... Your light! your truth!
I felt that I must tell you that I had ended by loving you. And to tell
you that I must first confess. Confess, go out--and perish.

"Suddenly you stood before me! You alone in all the world to whom I
must confess. You fascinated me--you have freed me from the blindness of
anger and hate--the truth shining in you drew the truth out of me. Now I
have done it; and as I write here, I am in the depths depths of anguish,
but there is air to breathe at last--air! And, by the by, that old man
sprang up from somewhere as I was speaking to you, and raged at me like
a disappointed devil. I suffer horribly, but I am not in despair. There
is only one more thing to do for me. After that--if they let me--I shall
go away and bury myself in obscure misery. In giving Victor Haldin up,
it was myself, after all, whom I hav