Pathzuol! The name of Veronika! My head swam. It was as if I had sustained a terrific blow between the eyes. Could it be that this Pathzuol, the man who had dishonored my mother, the man whom my father had commissioned me to murder, was her father? the father of her who had indeed been murdered, and of whose murder I had been accused? The mere possibility stunned and sickened me. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I had been under a pretty tense nervous strain ever since the reception of Tikulski’s letter in the afternoon. This last utterly undid me. My muscles relaxed, my knees knocked together, the perspiration trickled down my forehead. I went off into a regular fit of weeping, like a woman. It was not long before Merivale entered. I looked up and saw him standing over me, with a physiognomy divided between astonishment and contempt. “Ah, Lexow,” he said, shaking his head, “I am surprised at you.” Then his eyes grew stern, and he continued sharply, “Stop! Stop your crying. You ought to be ashamed. Whatever new misfortune has befallen you, you have no right to act like this. It is a man’s part to bear misfortune silently. It is a school-girl’s or a baby’s to take on in this fashion. Stop your crying, dry your eyes, and show what you are made of. Grit your teeth and clench your fists and don’t open your mouth till you are ready to behave like a reasonable being.” His words sobered me to some extent. “Well,” I said, “I am calm now. What do you want?” “If I should do what I want,” he answered, “you would not speedily forget it. I should—but never mind that. What I want you to do is to speak up like a man and explain the occasion of this rumpus, if you can.” “Here, read this,” I said, offering him the paper. He took it, glanced at it, turned it this way and that, handed it back. “How can I read it?” he said. “It’s German. Read it to me.—Come, read it to me,” he repeated, as I hesitated. I gulped down my reluctance and read the whole thing through as rapidly as I could in English. He sat across the table, smoking and drawing figures in the ash-pan with the ashes of his cigarette. Once in a while I heard him whistle softly to himself. He had thrown his last cigarette aside and was biting his fingernails when the reading drew to a close. “No more?” he asked. “Isn’t that enough?” I rejoined. “Oh, I didn’t mean that. Oh, yes; that’s enough; and it’s pretty bad too. But I expected something worse from the rough way you cut up.” “Worse? In heaven’s name what could be worse? My mother dishonored, my father broken hearted, and I marked out for a murderer, even from my cradle? And then—” “I say it’s hard, deucedly hard. But inasmuch as you’re not a murderer, you know, I wouldn’t let that side of the matter bother me, if I were you. The bad part of the business is to think of how your father’s happiness, your mother’s innocence, were destroyed. Think how he must have suffered!”