The blood beat like a sledge-hammer in Litvinov’s head, then slowly and painfully sank to his heart, and was chill as a stone in it. He read through Irina’s letter, and just as on that day at Moscow he fell in exhaustion on the sofa, and stayed there motionless. A dark abyss seemed suddenly to have opened on all sides of him, and he stared into this darkness in senseless despair. And so again, again deceit, no, worse than deceit, lying and baseness.... And life shattered, everything torn up by its roots utterly, and the sole thing which he could cling to--the last prop in fragments too! ‘Come after us to Petersburg,’ he repeated with a bitter inward laugh, ‘we will find you occupation.... Find me a place as a head clerk, eh? and who are _we_? Here there’s a hint of her past. Here we have the secret, hideous something I know nothing of, but which she has been trying to wipe out, to burn as in a fire. Here we have that world of intrigues, of secret relations, of shameful stories of Byelskys and Dolskys.... And what a future, what a lovely part awaiting me! To live close to her, visit her, share with her the morbid melancholy of the lady of fashion who is sick and weary of the world, but can’t live outside its circle, be the friend of the house of course, of his Excellency ... until ... until the whim changes and the plebeian lover loses his piquancy, and is replaced by that fat general or Mr. Finikov--that’s possible and pleasant, and I dare say useful.... She talks of a good use for my talents?... but the other project’s impracticable, impracticable....’ In Litvinov’s soul rose, like sudden gusts of wind before a storm, momentary impulses of fury.... Every expression in Irina’s letter roused his indignation, her very assertions of her unchanging feelings affronted him. ‘She can’t let it go like that,’ he cried at last, ‘I won’t allow her to play with my life so mercilessly.’ Litvinov jumped up, snatched his hat. But what was he to do? Run to her? Answer her letter? He stopped short, and his hands fell. ‘Yes; what was to be done?’ Had he not himself put this fatal choice to her? It had not turned out as he had wished ... there was that risk about every choice. She had changed her mind, it was true; she herself had declared at first that she would throw up everything and follow him; that was true too; but she did not deny her guilt, she called herself a weak woman; she did not want to deceive him, she had been deceived in herself.... What answer could be made to that? At any rate she was not hypocritical, she was not deceiving him ... she was open, remorselessly open. There was nothing forced her to speak out, nothing to prevent her from soothing him with promises, putting things off, and keeping it all in uncertainty till her departure ... till her departure with her husband for Italy? But she had ruined his life, ruined two lives.... What of that?