ith you?"

"Not yet"...

"Mind you are not forestalled"...

"Just so, indeed!" he said, striking his forehead. "Good-bye... I will
go and wait for her at the entrance."

He seized his forage-cap and ran.

Half an hour later I also set off. The street was dark and deserted.
Around the assembly rooms, or inn--whichever you prefer--people were
thronging. The windows were lighted up, the strains of the regimental
band were borne to me on the evening breeze. I walked slowly; I felt
melancholy.

"Can it be possible," I thought, "that my sole mission on earth is to
destroy the hopes of others? Ever since I began to live and to act, it
seems always to have been my fate to play a part in the ending of other
people's dramas, as if, but for me, no one could either die or fall
into despair! I have been the indispensable person of the fifth act;
unwillingly I have played the pitiful part of an executioner or a
traitor. What object has fate had in this?... Surely, I have not been
appointed by destiny to be an author of middle-class tragedies and family
romances, or to be a collaborator with the purveyor of stories--for the
'Reader's Library,' [272] for example?... How can I tell?... Are there
not many people who, in beginning life, think to end it like Lord Byron
or Alexander the Great, and, nevertheless, remain Titular Councillors
[273] all their days?"

Entering the saloon, I concealed myself in a crowd of men, and began to
make my observations.

Grushnitski was standing beside Princess Mary and saying something with
great warmth. She was listening to him absent-mindedly and looking about
her, her fan laid to her lips. Impatience was depicted upon her face,
her eyes were searching all around for somebody. I went softly behind
them in order to listen to their conversation.

"You torture me, Princess!" Grushnitski was saying. "You have changed
dreadfully since I saw you last"...

"You, too, have changed," she answered, casting a rapid glance at him,
in which he was unable to detect the latent sneer.

"I! Changed?... Oh, never! You know that such a thing is impossible!
Whoever has seen you once will bear your divine image with him for
ever."

"Stop"...

"But why will you not let me say to-night what you have so often
listened to with condescension--and just recently, too?"...

"Because I do not like repetitions," she answered, laughing.

"Oh! I have been bitterly mistaken!... I thought, fool that I was, that
these