Of course, it would be an exaggeration to say that this discovery led him to definite conclusions about his own life, yet there is no doubt that it produced in him a commotion bordering on despair. This state of mind was the more painful the more unconsciously he lived through the past which was the source of his commotion. There was something terrible in his past, he could not tell exactly what. It was as if a mountainous mass, hitherto motionless and hidden by an impenetrable veil, had suddenly moved upon him, threatening every moment to crush him. What he feared was that he might not be crushed, and he felt he must hasten the climax. He had been brooding over the idea for quite some time. "We shall have communion on Saturday," suddenly flashed through his mind. "It would be well to visit dear mother's grave and take leave of her." "Shall we walk over to the cemetery?" he turned to Anninka and explained his idea to her. "Why, if you wish, we'll drive out there." "No, not drive, but----" started Porfiry Vladimirych, but halted abruptly, as if struck by the thought that Anninka might be in his way. "I have sinned against my dear departed mother. I, I was the cause of her death!" The thought preyed on him, and the desire to "take leave" grew stronger in his heart, to take leave not by mere conventional words, but by throwing himself on her grave and bursting out in the sobs of a death agony. "So you say no one is to be blamed for Lubinka's death?" he suddenly asked, as if trying to cheer himself up. At first Anninka paid no attention to his question. Two or three minutes later, however, she felt an irresistible impulse to return to the subject of Lubinka's death and torment herself with it. "And her words were, 'Drink, you street-walker,'" he said, after she had repeated the story in detail. "Yes, her very words." "And you didn't drink?" "I didn't. I am alive, as you see." He rose and paced up and down the room several times, visibly affected. At last he went over to Anninka and stroked her head. "My poor, poor Anninka!" he said softly. At the touch of his hands a startling change took place in her. At first she was amazed, then her face began to work, and suddenly a violent torrent of hysterical, inhuman sobs burst from her chest. "Uncle, are you good? Tell me, are you good?" she fairly shrieked. In a broken voice, through tears and sobs, she kept on reiterating her query, the same she had asked him the day of her return to Golovliovo, to which he had given such an absurd reply. "You are good? Tell me, answer me, are you good?" "Did you hear what the priest read at the evening service?" he said, when she finally grew calm. "Oh, what sufferings He underwent! Only such sufferings can----And yet He forgave, forgave forever!" He resumed his pacing, his very soul rent with suffering and his face covered with beads of perspiration.