But as regards Tatyana, she was not guilty; the guilt was his, his, Litvinov’s alone, and he had no right to shake off the responsibility his own sin had laid with iron yoke upon him.... All this was so; but what was left him to do now? Again he flung himself on the sofa and again in gloom, darkly, dimly, without trace, with devouring swiftness, the minutes raced past.... ‘And why not obey her?’ flashed through his brain. ‘She loves me, she is mine, and in our very yearning towards each other, in this passion, which after so many years has burst upon us, and forced its way out with such violence, is there not something inevitable, irresistible, like a law of nature? Live in Petersburg ... and shall I be the first to be put in such a position? And how could we be in safety together?...’ And he fell to musing, and Irina’s shape, in the guise in which it was imprinted for ever in his late memories, softly rose before him.... But not for long.... He mastered himself, and with a fresh outburst of indignation drove away from him both those memories and that seductive image. ‘You give me to drink from that golden cup,’ he cried, ‘but there is poison in the draught, and your white wings are besmirched with mire.... Away! Remain here with you after the way I ... I drove away my betrothed ... a deed of infamy, of infamy!’ He wrung his hands with anguish, and another face with the stamp of suffering on its still features, with dumb reproach in its farewell eyes, rose from the depths.... And for a long time Litvinov was in this agony still; for a long time, his tortured thought, like a man fever-stricken, tossed from side to side.... He grew calm at last; at last he came to a decision. From the very first instant he had a presentiment of this decision; ... it had appeared to him at first like a distant, hardly perceptible point in the midst of the darkness and turmoil of his inward conflict; then it had begun to move nearer and nearer, till it ended by cutting with icy edge into his heart. Litvinov once more dragged his box out of the corner, once more he packed all his things, without haste, even with a kind of stupid carefulness, rang for the waiter, paid his bill, and despatched to Irina a note in Russian to the following purport: ‘I don’t know whether you are doing me a greater wrong now than then; but I know this present blow is infinitely heavier.... It is the end. You tell me, “I cannot”; and I repeat to you, “I cannot ...” do what you want. I cannot and I don’t want to. Don’t answer me. You are not capable of giving me the only answer I would accept. I am going away to-morrow early by the first train. Good-bye, may you be happy! We shall in all probability not see each other again.’