'Papa is not at home,' continued Viktorinka, 'and Irinotchka is not well; all night long she was crying and crying. . . .'
'Crying?'
'Yes, crying . . . Yegorovna told me, and her eyes are so red, they are quite in-in-flamed. . . .'
Litvinov walked twice up and down the room shuddering as though with cold, and went back to his lodging. He experienced a sensation like that which gains possession of a man when he looks down from a high tower; everything failed within him, and his head was swimming slowly with a sense of nausea. Dull stupefaction, and thoughts scurrying like mice, vague terror, and the numbness of expectation, and curiosity—strange, almost malignant—and the weight of crushed tears in his heavy laden breast, on his lips the forced empty smile, and a meaningless prayer—addressed to no one. . . . Oh, how bitter it all was, and how hideously degrading! 'Irina does not want to see me,' was the thought that was incessantly revolving in his brain; 'so much is clear; but why is it? What can have happened at that ill-fated ball? And how is such a change possible all at once? So suddenly. . . .' People always see death coming suddenly, but they can never get accustomed to its suddenness, they feel it sense-
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