After a time Pan Gideon was alone. Two servants came to remove the supper dishes, but he sent them away with a quick burst of anger, and there was silence in the dining-hall, only the great Dantsic clock repeated loudly and with importance: tik-tak! tik-tak! Pan Gideon placed his hand on his bald head and began to walk in the chamber. He approached the door beyond which the prelate was talking with Anulka, but he heard merely sounds in which he distinguished the voice but not the words of the prelate. So in turn he walked and halted. He went to the window, for it seemed to him that there he would breathe with more freedom. He looked for a while at the sky, with eyes from which expression had vanished,--that sky over which the wind was hurrying the torn clouds of spring, with light on their upper edges through which the pale moon seemed to rise higher and higher. As often as he rested an evil foreboding took hold of him. He looked through the window close to which black limbs of trees were wrestling back and forth with the wind, as if in torment; in the same way his thoughts were struggling back and forth, disordered, evil, resembling reproaches of conscience, and painful forebodings that some bad thing would happen, and that near punishment was waiting--but when it grew bright out of doors, again better hope entered him. Every one has a right to think of his own happiness--as to Yatsek Tachevski it was of little importance what such people do! What was the question at present? The happiness and calm future of a young girl; but besides this there smiled on him a little life in his old age--and this belongs to him. This only is real, the rest is wind, wind! And he felt again a turning of the head, and black spots danced before his vision, but that lasted very briefly. Then he approached the door behind which his fate was in the balance. Meanwhile the light on the table acquired a long wick and the chamber grew gloomy. At times the voice of the prelate became sharper, so that words would have reached the ear of Pan Gideon had it not been for that loud and continuous "tik-tak." It was easy to understand that such a conversation could not end quickly, still, Pan Gideon's alarm grew and grew, turning, as it were, into certain wonderful questions woven into the past, with memories not only of former misfortunes and pain, but also of former unextinguished transgressions, of former grievous sins, and of recent injustices inflicted not only on Tachevski, but on others. "Why and wherefore shouldst thou be happy?" asked his conscience. And he would have given at that moment he knew not how much if even Pani Vinnitski might return to the chamber, so that he should not be alone with those thoughts of his. But Pani Vinnitski was occupied somewhere with work in another part of the mansion, while in that dining-hall there was nothing but the clock with its "tik-tak!" "For what deed should God reward thee?" asked his conscience.