leaping up suddenly
from his chair.

"But I say, you are yourself the honourable person who brought word
to Lebyadkin from Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch that a thousand roubles were
sent, not three hundred. Why, the captain told me so himself when he was
drunk."

"It's... it's an unhappy misunderstanding. Some one's made a mistake and
it's led to... It's nonsense, and it's base of you."

"But I'm ready to believe that it's nonsense, and I'm distressed at the
story, for, take it as you will, a girl of an honourable reputation
is implicated first over the seven hundred roubles, and secondly in
unmistakable intimacy with Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. For how much does it
mean to his excellency to disgrace a girl of good character, or put to
shame another man's wife, like that incident with me? If he comes across
a generous-hearted man he'll force him to cover the sins of others under
the shelter of his honourable name. That's just what I had to put up
with, I'm speaking of myself...."

"Be careful, Liputin." Stepan Trofimovitch got up from his easy chair
and turned pale.

"Don't believe it, don't believe it! Somebody has made a mistake
and Lebyadkin's drunk..." exclaimed the engineer in indescribable
excitement. "It will all be explained, but I can't.... And I think it's
low.... And that's enough, enough!"

He ran out of the room.

"What are you about? Why, I'm going with you!" cried Liputin, startled.
He jumped up and ran after Alexey Nilitch.

VII

Stepan Trofimovitch stood a moment reflecting, looked at me as though he
did not see me, took up his hat and stick and walked quietly out of
the room. I followed him again, as before. As we went out of the gate,
noticing that I was accompanying him, he said:

"Oh yes, you may serve as a witness..._de l'accident. Vous
m'accompagnerez, n'est-ce pas?_"

"Stepan Trofimovitch, surely you're not going there again? Think what
may come of it!"

With a pitiful and distracted smile, a smile of shame and utter despair,
and at the same time of a sort of strange ecstasy, he whispered to me,
standing still for an instant:

"I can't marry to cover 'another man's sins'!"

These words were just what I was expecting. At last that fatal sentence
that he had kept hidden from me was uttered aloud, after a whole week of
shuffling and pretence. I was positively enraged.

"And you, Stepan Verhovensky, with your luminous mind, your kind heart,
can harbour such a dirty, such a low idea...