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The latter, noticing Novikoff's agitation, thought Inwardly, "You good-natured old fool!" Then he continued: "As to the relations between Lida and Sarudine, I can affirm nothing positively, for I know nothing, but I don't believe that...." He did not finish the sentence when he saw how dark the other's face became.
"What has happened?" exclaimed Sanine. The soldier murmured something and ran on, wailing as he went. As a phantom he vanished in the night. "That was Sarudine's servant," thought Sanine, and then it flashed across him: "Sarudine has shot himself!" For a moment he peered into the darkness, and his brow grew cold.
That evening he walked for a long while with Sina Karsavina; yet her beautiful eyes and gentle caressing manner did not enable him to shake off his depression. "How awful it is to think," he said, his eyes fixed on the ground, "to think that Sarudine no longer exists. A handsome, merry, careless young officer like that!
"You really are a most extraordinary person," he began, with difficulty checking his fierce wish to strike her. "Here am I, with a room full of people; your brother's there, too! Couldn't you have chosen some other time to come? Upon my word, it is too provoking!" From the dark eyes there shot such a strange flash that Sarudine quailed. His tone changed.
To be conscious of one's own strength is pleasant, of course, but it was nevertheless a horrible experience horrible, because such an act in itself was brutal. Yet my conscience is calm. I was but the instrument of fate. Sarudine has come to grief because the whole bent of his life was bound to bring about a catastrophe; and the marvel is that others of his sort do not share his fate.
Sarudine saw that Volochine was smiling to himself, as if he did not believe that the former had ever been on intimate terms with Lida. "Ah! Ah! Ah! Very good!" he said to himself, as he bit his lip viciously. "Oh! our famous Petersburg life!" Volochine, who chattered with ease, looked like a silly little monkey babbling of things that it did not comprehend.
"Of course I refuse," said Sanine in a strangely calm voice, looking the other straight in the eyes. Sarudine breathed hard, as if he were lifting a heavy weight. "Once more I ask you do you refuse?" His voice had a hard, metallic ring. Soloveitchik turned very pale. "Oh, dear! Oh! dear! He's going to hit him!" he thought.
It was this knowledge that a man whom he held to be so absolutely his inferior should feel ashamed of him, which convinced Sarudine that all was now at an end. He could not cross the courtyard without assistance. Tanaroff and the scared, trembling orderly almost had to carry him. If there were other onlookers, Sarudine did not see them.
"We shall be seen," she murmured half audibly. Though not encouraging his embrace, she yet did not shrink from it; such passive surrender excited him the more. "One word, just one!" whispered Sarudine, as he crushed her closer to him, his veins throbbing with desire; "will you come?" Lida trembled.
He stood with legs apart, breathing hard, and big drops of sweat were on his brow. Sarudine slowly staggered to his feet. Faint, incoherent words escaped from his quivering, swollen lips, vague words of menace that to Sanine sounded singularly ridiculous. The whole left side of Sarudine's face had instantly became swollen.
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