in-law in a state of suspicion is a delightful study."

By now we were in a narrow street, so dark that we stumbled at every
step. We seemed to be quite alone.

It was I who now caught his arm. "Semyonov!" I said, and my urgency
stopped him so that he stood where he was. "Leave them alone! Leave them
alone! They've done no harm to you, they can offer you nothing, they are
not intelligent enough for you nor amusing enough. Even if it is true
what you say it will pass--Lawrence will go away. I will see that he
does. Only leave them alone! For God's sake, let them be!"

His face was very close to mine, and, looking at it in the gathering
dark, it was as though it were a face of glass behind which other faces
passed and repassed. I cannot hope to give any idea of the strange
mingling of regret, malice, pride, pain, scorn, and humour that those
eyes showed. His red lips parted as though he would speak, for a moment
he turned away from me and looked down the black tunnel of the street,
then he walked forward again.

"You are wrong, my friend," he said, "if you imagine that there is no
amusement for me in the study of my family. It _is_ my family, you know.
I have none other. Perhaps it has never occurred to you, Durward, that
possibly I am a lonely man."

As he spoke I heard again the echo of that voice as it vanished into the
darkness.... "No one?" and the answer: "No one."...

"Don't imagine," he continued, "that I am asking for your pity. That
indeed would be humorous. I pity no one, and I despise the men who have
it to bestow... but there are situations in life that are intolerable,
Ivan Andreievitch, and any man who _is_ a man will see that he escapes
from such a thing. May I not find in the bosom of my family such an
escape?" He laughed.

"I know nothing about that," I began hotly. "All I know is--"

But he went on as though he had not heard me.

"Have you ever thought about death since you came away from the Front,
Durward? It used to occupy your mind a good deal while you were there, I
remember--in a foolish, romantic, sentimental way of course. You'll
forgive my saying that your views of death were those of a second-hand
novelist--all the same I'll do you the justice of acknowledging that you
had studied it at first hand. You're not a coward, you know."

I was struck most vividly with a sense of his uneasiness. During those
other days uneasy was the very last thing that I ever would have said
that he was--