ted him to the utmost and without
ceasing. He grew thin and dispirited through it. It was something of
which he was more ashamed than of anything else, and of which he would
not on any account speak, even to me; on the contrary, he lied on
occasion, and shuffled before me like a little boy; and at the same time
he sent for me himself every day, could not stay two hours without me,
needing me as much as air or water.

Such conduct rather wounded my vanity. I need hardly say that I had
long ago privately guessed this great secret of his, and saw through it
completely. It was my firmest conviction at the time that the revelation
of this secret, this chief anxiety of Stepan Trofimovitch's would not
have redounded to his credit, and, therefore, as I was still young, I
was rather indignant at the coarseness of his feelings and the ugliness
of some of his suspicions. In my warmth--and, I must confess, in my
weariness of being his confidant--I perhaps blamed him too much. I was
so cruel as to try and force him to confess it all to me himself, though
I did recognise that it might be difficult to confess some things. He,
too, saw through me; that is, he clearly perceived that I saw through
him, and that I was angry with him indeed, and he was angry with me
too for being angry with him and seeing through him. My irritation was
perhaps petty and stupid; but the unrelieved solitude of two friends
together is sometimes extremely prejudicial to true friendship. From a
certain point of view he had a very true understanding of some aspects
of his position, and defined it, indeed, very subtly on those points
about which he did not think it necessary to be secret.

"Oh, how different she was then!" he would sometimes say to me about
Varvara Petrovna. "How different she was in the old days when we used to
talk together.... Do you know that she could talk in those days! Can
you believe that she had ideas in those days, original ideas! Now,
everything has changed! She says all that's only old-fashioned twaddle.
She despises the past.... Now she's like some shopman or cashier, she
has grown hard-hearted, and she's always cross...."

"Why is she cross now if you are carrying out her orders?" I answered.

He looked at me subtly.

"_Cher ami_; if I had not agreed she would have been dreadfully angry,
dread-ful-ly! But yet less than now that I have consented."

He was pleased with this saying of his, and we emptied a bottle between
us that