eply indebted to you,
then, perhaps you'll understand...."

"Oh, I assure you, I hope for it too," Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered
jerkily.

"You'll understand then the impulse which leads one in the blindness
of generous feeling to take up a man who is unworthy of one in every
respect, a man who utterly fails to understand one, who is ready to
torture one at every opportunity and, in contradiction to everything, to
exalt such a man into a sort of ideal, into a dream. To concentrate in
him all one's hopes, to bow down before him; to love him all one's life,
absolutely without knowing why--perhaps just because he was unworthy of
it.... Oh, how I've suffered all my life, Pyotr Stepanovitch!"

Stepan Trofimovitch, with a look of suffering on his face, began trying
to catch my eye, but I turned away in time.

"... And only lately, only lately--oh, how unjust I've been to Nicolas!
... You would not believe how they have been worrying me on all sides,
all, all, enemies, and rascals, and friends, friends perhaps more than
enemies. When the first contemptible anonymous letter was sent to me,
Pyotr Stepanovitch, you'll hardly believe it, but I had not strength
enough to treat all this wickedness with contempt.... I shall never,
never forgive myself for my weakness."

"I had heard something of anonymous letters here already," said Pyotr
Stepanovitch, growing suddenly more lively, "and I'll find out the
writers of them, you may be sure."

"But you can't imagine the intrigues that have been got up here. They
have even been pestering our poor Praskovya Ivanovna, and what reason
can they have for worrying her? I was quite unfair to you to-day
perhaps, my dear Praskovya Ivanovna," she added in a generous impulse of
kindliness, though not without a certain triumphant irony.

"Don't say any more, my dear," the other lady muttered reluctantly.
"To my thinking we'd better make an end of all this; too much has been
said."

And again she looked timidly towards Liza, but the latter was looking at
Pyotr Stepanovitch.

"And I intend now to adopt this poor unhappy creature, this insane
woman who has lost everything and kept only her heart," Varvara Petrovna
exclaimed suddenly. "It's a sacred duty I intend to carry out. I take
her under my protection from this day."

"And that will be a very good thing in one way," Pyotr Stepanovitch
cried, growing quite eager again. "Excuse me, I did not finish just now.
It's just the care of her I wan