PART FOURTH.
SECOND MARRIAGE.
I.
Much Esteemed Lady, Viéra Pavlovna,—
My close relationship with the late Dmitri Sergéitch Lopukhóf gives me the hope that you will kindly include in the number of your acquaintances a person who is an absolute stranger to you, but who deeply respects you. At all events, I venture to think that you will not accuse me of imposing upon you. By entering into correspondence with you, I only fulfil the desire of the late Dmitri Sergéitch, and those tidings which I am going to impart about him you can look upon as absolutely true, because I shall speak of his thoughts in his own language as though he were speaking himself. And here are his words about a matter, the explanation of which is the aim of my letter.
"The thoughts which brought the conclusion so disturbing to the people nearest to me [I am quoting Dmitri Sergéitch's original words, as I said before] gradually grew in my mind, and my mind was changed several times before it received its ultimate development. The circumstance which caused these thoughts came under my observation in an entirely unexpected way, only at the moment when she [Dmitri Sergéitch means you] with fear told me about a dream which horrified her. The dream appeared to me very significant; and, as a man who was accustomed to look upon the state of her feelings from without, I understood at that very moment that an episode was beginning in her life which, within a longer or shorter time, would change our relations. But a man tries till the very last to preserve the situation to which he has become accustomed. In the depths of our nature lies a conservative element from which we yield only out of necessity. This, according to my opinion, contains the explanation of my first supposition. I wanted to think, and I succeeded in thinking, that this episode might pass away after some time, and then our former relations would
