‘You know,’ observed Bersenyev, ‘Dmitri Nikanorovitch does not care to give reasons for his actions. But I think... let us sit down, Elena Nikolaevna, you don’t seem very well.... I fancy I can guess what is the real cause of this sudden departure.’ ‘What--what cause?’ repeated Elena, and unconsciously she gripped tightly Bersenyev’s hand in her chill fingers. ‘You see,’ began Bersenyev, with a pathetic smile, ‘how can I explain to you? I must go back to last spring, to the time when I began to be more intimate with Insarov. I used to meet him then at the house of a relative, who had a daughter, a very pretty girl I thought that Insarov cared for her, and I told him so. He laughed, and answered that I was mistaken, that he was quite heart-whole, but if anything of that sort did happen to him, he should run away directly, as he did not want, in his own words, for the sake of personal feeling, to be false to his cause and his duty. “I am a Bulgarian,” he said, “and I have no need of a Russian love----” ‘Well--so--now you----’ whispered Elena. She involuntarily turned away her head, like a man expecting a blow, but she still held the hand she had clutched. ‘I think,’ he said, and his own voice sank, ‘I think that what I fancied then has really happened now.’ ‘That is--you think--don’t torture me!’ broke suddenly from Elena. ‘I think,’ Bersenyev continued hurriedly, ‘that Insarov is in love now with a Russian girl, and he is resolved to go, according to his word.’ Elena clasped his hand still tighter, and her head drooped still lower, as if she would hide from other eyes the flush of shame which suddenly blazed over her face and neck. ‘Andrei Petrovitch, you are kind as an angel,’ she said, ‘but will he come to say goodbye?’ ‘Yes, I imagine so; he will be sure to come. He wouldn’t like to go away----’ ‘Tell him, tell him----’ But here the poor girl broke down; tears rushed streaming from her eyes, and she ran out of the room. ‘So that’s how she loves him,’ thought Bersenyev, as he walked slowly home. ‘I didn’t expect that; I didn’t think she felt so strongly. I am kind, she says:’ he pursued his reflections:... ‘Who can tell what feelings, what impulse drove me to tell Elena all that? It was not kindness; no, not kindness. It was all the accursed desire to make sure whether the dagger is really in the wound. I ought to be content. They love each other, and I have been of use to them.... The future go-between between science and the Russian public Shubin calls me; it seems as though it had been decreed at my birth that I should be a go-between. But if I’m mistaken? No, I’m not mistaken----’ It was bitter for Andrei Petrovitch, and he could not turn his mind to Raumer.