"It seems that they have much; still, I am playing against a card somewhat hidden. It is likely that they have much ready money. The mother told me repeatedly that her daughter would not need to look to her husband's property. I saw their safe; they keep a big house. I know nearly all the money-lenders--Jews and non-Jews--in Warsaw, and I know surely that these ladies are not in debt a copper to any one; as thou knowest thyself, they have a nice villa not far from the Bigiels. They do not live on their capital, for they are too prudent." "Thou hast no positive figures, however?" "I tried to get them, but in roundabout fashion. Not being too certain of my connection with the ladies, I could not insist overmuch. It was given me to understand that there would be two hundred thousand rubles, and perhaps more." Pan Stanislav took leave, and on the way to the Plavitskis' thought, "All this is a kind of mystery, a kind of darkness, a kind of risk. I prefer Marynia." Half an hour later he was driving with Marynia to the cemetery, to Litka. The day was warm, as in spring, but gray; the city seemed sullen and dirty. In the cemetery the melting snow had slipped in patches to the ground from the graves, and covered the yellow, half-decayed grass. From the arms of crosses and leafless tree-branches large drops were falling, which, borne from time to time by gusts of warm wind, struck the faces of Pan Stanislav and Marynia. These gusts pulled Marynia's dress, so that she had to hold it. They stopped at last before Litka's grave. And here all was wet, sloppy, gloomy, half-stripped of the melting snow. The thought that that child, once so cared for, so loved, and so petted, was lying in that damp dungeon darkness, could hardly find a place in Pan Stanislav's head. "All this may be natural," thought he; "but it is not possible to be reconciled with death." And, in truth, whenever he visited Litka, he returned from the cemetery in a kind of irrepressible rebellion, with a species of passionate protest in his soul. These thoughts began to rend him in that moment also. It seemed to him simply terrible to love Litka, and to reconcile his love with the knowledge that a few steps lower down she is lying there, black and decaying. "I ought not to come," said he to himself, "for I grow mad, lose my head here, and lose every basis of life." But, above all, he suffered, for, if it is impossible not to think of death, it is equally impossible to explain it; hence everything touching it, which comes to the head, is, in so far as a man does not stretch forth his hand toward simple faith, at once despairing and shallow, trivial and common. "For me there is a greater question here than that of existence itself, but I am only able to answer with a commonplace. A perfectly vicious circle!"