‘My invention! If I had imagined it, it should not have made you angry; and as for my right, well I never heard before that a man ought to ask himself whether he had the right to hold out a hand to a drowning man.’ ‘I am humbly grateful for your tender solicitude,’ cried Litvinov passionately, ‘but I am not in the least in need of it, and all the phrases about the ruin of inexperienced young men wrought by society women, about the immorality of fashionable society, and so on, I look upon merely as stock phrases, and indeed in a sense I positively despise them; and so I beg you to spare your rescuing arm, and to let me drown in peace.’ Potugin again raised his eyes to Litvinov. He was breathing hard, his lips were twitching. ‘But look at me, young man,’ broke from him at last, and he clapped himself on the breast: ‘can you suppose I have anything in common with the ordinary, self-satisfied moralist, a preacher? Don’t you understand that simply from interest in you, however strong it might be, I would never have let fall a word, I would never have given you grounds for reproaching me with what I hate above all things--indiscretion, intrusiveness? Don’t you see that this is something of a different kind altogether, that before you is a man crushed, utterly obliterated by the very passion, from the results of which he would save you, and ... and for the same woman!’ Litvinov stepped back a pace. ‘Is it possible? What did you say?... You ... you ... Sozont Ivanitch? But Madame Byelsky ... that child?’ ‘Ah, don’t cross-examine me.... Believe me! That is a dark terrible story, and I’m not going to tell you it. Madame Byelsky I hardly knew, that child is not mine, but I took it all upon myself ... because ... _she_ wished it, because it was necessary for _her_. Why am I here in your hateful Baden? And, in fact, could you suppose, could you for one instant imagine, that I’d have brought myself to caution you out of sympathy for you? I’m sorry for that sweet, good girl, your _fiancée_, but what have I to do with your future, with you both?... But I am afraid for her ... for her.’ ‘You do me great honour, Mr. Potugin,’ began Litvinov, ‘but since, according to you, we are both in the same position, why is it you don’t apply such exhortations to yourself, and ought I not to ascribe your apprehensions to another feeling?’