Litvinov started, and saw before him his servant with a note in his hand. He recognised Irina’s writing.... Before he had broken the seal, he had a foreknowledge of woe, and bent his head on his breast and hunched his shoulders, as though shrinking from the blow. He plucked up courage at last, and tore open the envelope all at once. On a small sheet of notepaper were the following lines: ‘Forgive me, Grigory Mihalitch. All is over between us; I am going away to Petersburg. I am dreadfully unhappy, but the thing is done. It seems my fate ... but no, I do not want to justify myself. My presentiments have been realised. Forgive me, forget me; I am not worthy of you.--Irina. Be magnanimous: do not try to see me.’ Litvinov read these five lines, and slowly dropped on to the sofa, as though some one had dealt him a blow on the breast. He dropped the note, picked it up, read it again, whispered ‘to Petersburg,’ and dropped it again; that was all. There even came upon him a sense of peace; he even, with his hands thrown behind him, smoothed the pillow under his head. ‘Men wounded to death don’t fling themselves about,’ he thought, ‘as it has come, so it has gone. All this is natural enough: I always expected it....’ (He was lying to himself; he had never expected anything like it.) ‘Crying?... Was she crying?... What was she crying for? Why, she did not love me! But all that is easily understood and in accordance with her character. She--she is not worthy of me.... That’s it!’ (He laughed bitterly.) ‘She did not know herself what power was latent in her,--well, convinced of it in her effect at the ball, was it likely she would stay with an insignificant student?--all that’s easily understood.’ But then he remembered her tender words, her smile, and those eyes, those never to be forgotten eyes, which he would never see again, which used to shine and melt at simply meeting his eyes; he recalled one swift, timorous, burning kiss--and suddenly he fell to sobbing, sobbing convulsively, furiously, vindictively; turned over on his face, and choking and stifling with frenzied satisfaction as though thirsting to tear himself to pieces with all around him, he turned his hot face in the sofa pillow, and bit it in his teeth.