He read it and simply flung down the book. He was trembling all over. “An awful text,” he said. “There’s no denying you’ve picked out fitting ones.” He rose from the chair. “Well!” he said, “good-by, perhaps I shan’t come again ... we shall meet in heaven. So I have been for fourteen years ‘in the hands of the living God,’ that’s how one must think of those fourteen years. To-morrow I will beseech those hands to let me go.” I wanted to take him in my arms and kiss him, but I did not dare—his face was contorted and somber. He went away. “Good God,” I thought, “what has he gone to face!” I fell on my knees before the ikon and wept for him before the Holy Mother of God, our swift defender and helper. I was half an hour praying in tears, and it was late, about midnight. Suddenly I saw the door open and he came in again. I was surprised. “Where have you been?” I asked him. “I think,” he said, “I’ve forgotten something ... my handkerchief, I think.... Well, even if I’ve not forgotten anything, let me stay a little.” He sat down. I stood over him. “You sit down, too,” said he. I sat down. We sat still for two minutes; he looked intently at me and suddenly smiled—I remembered that—then he got up, embraced me warmly and kissed me. “Remember,” he said, “how I came to you a second time. Do you hear, remember it!” And he went out. “To-morrow,” I thought. And so it was. I did not know that evening that the next day was his birthday. I had not been out for the last few days, so I had no chance of hearing it from any one. On that day he always had a great gathering, every one in the town went to it. It was the same this time. After dinner he walked into the middle of the room, with a paper in his hand—a formal declaration to the chief of his department who was present. This declaration he read aloud to the whole assembly. It contained a full account of the crime, in every detail. “I cut myself off from men as a monster. God has visited me,” he said in conclusion. “I want to suffer for my sin!” Then he brought out and laid on the table all the things he had been keeping for fourteen years, that he thought would prove his crime, the jewels belonging to the murdered woman which he had stolen to divert suspicion, a cross and a locket taken from her neck with a portrait of her betrothed in the locket, her notebook and two letters; one from her betrothed, telling her that he would soon be with her, and her unfinished answer left on the table to be sent off next day. He carried off these two letters—what for? Why had he kept them for fourteen years afterwards instead of destroying them as evidence against him?