in regard to the discovery. After he had given her sufficient time to speak out her mind, he said:—
"All that you have said in your own excuse is idle. I was obliged to remain so as not to seem discourteous, lest you should think that I blamed you or were angry. But I must confess that I did not listen to what you said. Oh, if I did not know that you were right! And how good it would be if you were not right! I would tell her that we could not agree about the terms, or that you did not satisfy me! and that would be the end of it; she and I could hope for some other way of escape. But now what can I tell her?"
Mrs. B. shed tears.
"What can I tell her?" repeated Lopukhóf, as he went down stairs. "What will become of her? What will become of her?" he asked himself as he came out from Galernaïa Street upon the Konno-Gvardeisky Boulevard.
Of course Mrs. B. was not right in that absolute sense of the word in which people are right who try to prove to little children that the moon is not to be seized with the hand. It was very possible, nay, even probable, that through her position in society, through her husband's quite important official connections, if she had seriously desired Viérotchka to live with her, Marya Alekséyevna would not have been able to tear Viérotchka from her hands, without causing serious trouble for herself and her husband, who would have to figure as the official defendants in the law-suit, and this she would have feared. But, nevertheless, Mrs. B. would have to take a good deal of trouble on her shoulders, and would possibly have some disagreeable interviews. It would be necessary in behalf of a stranger to incur obligations to people whose services it would be better to reserve for one's own affairs. Who is compelled, and what reasonable man would want, to act in a different way from Mrs. B.? We haven't the slightest right to blame her. Yes, Lopukhóf was not wrong when he despaired about Viérotchka's escape.
XIV.
Now Viérotchka has been sitting long, long, on the appointed bench, and how often did her heart beat quickly, quickly, when she saw an army cap coming around the
