“Get a revolver, rush at him, and put a couple of bullets through his head … and then, as he lies there, stamp on his face, on his eyes, on his teeth!…” The compress fell to the floor with a dull thud. Sarudine, startled, opened his eyes and, in the dimly-lighted room, saw a basin with water, a towel, and the dark window, that like an awful eye, stared at him mysteriously. “No, no, there’s no help for it now,” he thought, in dull despair. “They all saw it; saw how I was struck in the face, and how I crawled along on all fours. Oh! the shame of it! Struck like that, in the face! No, it’s too much! I shall never be free or happy again!” And again through his mind there flashed a new, keen thought. “After all, have I ever been free? No. That’s just why I’ve come to grief now, because my life has never been free; because I’ve never lived it in my own way. Of my own free will should I ever have wanted to fight a duel, or to hit him with the whip? Nobody would have struck me, and everything would have been all right. Who first imagined, and when, that an insult could only be wiped out with blood? Not I, certainly. Well, I’ve wiped it out, or rather, it’s been wiped out with my blood, hasn’t it? I don’t know what it all means, but I know this, that I shall have to leave the regiment!” His thoughts would fain have taken another direction, yet, like birds with clipped wings, they always fell back again, back to the one central fact that he had been grossly insulted, and would be obliged to leave the regiment. He remembered having once seen a fly that had fallen into syrup crawling over the floor, dragging its sticky legs and wings along with the utmost difficulty. It was plain that the wretched insect must die, though it still struggled, and made frantic efforts to regain its feet. At the time he had turned away from it in disgust, and now he saw it again, as in a feverish dream. Then he suddenly thought of a fight that he had once witnessed between two peasants, when one, with a terrific blow in the face, felled the other, an elderly, grey-haired man. He got up, wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve, exclaiming with emphasis, “What a fool!” “Yes, I remember seeing that,” thought Sarudine, “and then they had drinks together at the ‘Crown.’” The night drew near to its end. In silence so strange, so oppressive, it seemed as if Sarudine were the one living, suffering soul left on earth. On the table the guttering candle was still burning with a faint, steady, flame. Lost in the gloom of his disordered thoughts Sarudine stared at it with glittering, feverish eyes.