"Nicolai Stiepanich!" she says, growing pale and pressing her hands to her breast. "Nicolai Stiepanich! I can't go on like this any longer. I can't. For God's sake tell me now, immediately. What shall I do? Tell me. what shall I do?"
"What can I say? I am beaten. I can say nothing."
"But tell me, I implore you," she continues, out of breath and trembling all over her body. "I swear to you, I can't go on like this any longer. I haven't the strength."
She drops into a chair and begins to sob. She throws her head back, wrings her hands, stamps with her feet; her hat falls from her head and dangles by its string, her hair is loosened.
"Help me, help," she implores. "I can't bear it any more."
She takes a handkerchief out of her little travelling bag and with it pulls out some letters which fall from her knees to the floor. I pick them up from the floor and recognise on one of them Mikhail Fiodorovich's hand-writing, and accidentally read part of a word: "passionat. . . ."
"There's nothing that I can say to you, Katy," I say.
"Help me," she sobs, seizing my hand and kissing it. "You're my father, my only friend. You're wise and learned, and you've lived long! You were a teacher. Tell me what to do."
I am bewildered and surprised, stirred by her sobbing, and I can hardly stand upright.
