Markelov did not at once reply.
'Nezhdanov,' he said all at once in a low, but despairing voice, 'Nezhdanov! For God's sake come into my house, if only to let me beg on my knees for your forgiveness! Nezhdanov! Forget . . . Alexey! forget, forget my senseless words! Oh, if any one could feel how miserable I am!' Markelov struck himself on the breast with his fist, and it seemed to give forth a hollow groan. 'Alexey! be magnanimous! Give me your hand! . . . Don't refuse to forgive me!'
Nezhdanov held out his hand—irresolutely—still he held it out. Markelov squeezed it so that he almost cried out.
The coachman stopped at the steps of Markelov's house.
'Listen, Alexey,' Markelov was saying to him a quarter of an hour after in his room, . . . 'dear brother,' he kept addressing him by this familiar, endearing term; and in this affectionate familiarity to the man in whom he had discovered a successful rival, to whom he had only just offered d deadly insult, whom he had been ready to kill, to tear to pieces, there was the expression of irrevocable renunciation, and humble, bitter supplication, and a sort of claim too.. . . Nezhdanov recognised this claim by beginning to address Markelov in the same familiar way.
7
