because I am weary of life
and nothing matters to me. But she may exasperate me, and then it will
matter. I shall resent it and refuse. _Et enfin, le ridicule_...what will
they say at the club? What will... what will... Laputin say? 'Perhaps
nothing will come of it'--what a thing to say! That beats everything.
That's really... what is one to say to that?... _Je suis un forcat, un
Badinguet, un_ man pushed to the wall...."

And at the same time a sort of capricious complacency, something
frivolous and playful, could be seen in the midst of all these plaintive
exclamations. In the evening we drank too much again.

CHAPTER III. THE SINS OF OTHERS

ABOUT A WEEK had passed, and the position had begun to grow more
complicated.

I may mention in passing that I suffered a great deal during that
unhappy week, as I scarcely left the side of my affianced friend, in the
capacity of his most intimate confidant. What weighed upon him most
was the feeling of shame, though we saw no one all that week, and sat
indoors alone. But he was even ashamed before me, and so much so that
the more he confided to me the more vexed he was with me for it. He was
so morbidly apprehensive that he expected that every one knew about it
already, the whole town, and was afraid to show himself, not only at the
club, but even in his circle of friends. He positively would not go out
to take his constitutional till well after dusk, when it was quite dark.

A week passed and he still did not know whether he were betrothed or
not, and could not find out for a fact, however much he tried. He had
not yet seen his future bride, and did not know whether she was to be
his bride or not; did not, in fact, know whether there was anything
serious in it at all. Varvara Petrovna, for some reason, resolutely
refused to admit him to her presence. In answer to one of his first
letters to her (and he wrote a great number of them) she begged him
plainly to spare her all communications with him for a time, because
she was very busy, and having a great deal of the utmost importance to
communicate to him she was waiting for a more free moment to do so, and
that she would let him know _in time_ when he could come to see her. She
declared she would send back his letters unopened, as they were "simple
self-indulgence." I read that letter myself--he showed it me.

Yet all this harshness and indefiniteness were nothing compared with
his chief anxiety. That anxiety tormen