“Why have you done all this? The body of the malefactor and the soul of an innocent--why should you have it all?” Trirodov, looking angrily at his visitor, said resolutely: “My design has been daring and difficult--but have I alone suffered from despondency, suffered until I perspired with blood? Do I alone bear within me a dual soul, and unite in me two worlds? Am I alone worn out by nightmares as heavy as the burdens of the world? Have I alone in a tragic moment felt myself lonely and forsaken?” The visitor smiled a strange, sad, tranquil smile. Trirodov continued: “You had better know that I will never be with you, that I will not accept your comforting theories. All your literary and preaching activity is a complete mistake. I don’t believe anything of what you say so eloquently, enticing the weak. I simply don’t believe it.” The visitor was silent. “Leave me alone!” said Trirodov decisively. “There is no miracle. There was no resurrection. No one has conquered death. The establishment of a single will over the inert, amorphous world is a deed not yet accomplished.” Prince Davidov rose and said sorrowfully: “I will leave you alone, if you wish it. But you will regret that you have rejected the path I have shown you--the only path.” Trirodov said proudly: “I know the true path--my path.” “Good-bye,” said Prince Davidov simply and calmly. He left--and in a little while it seemed that he had not been there. Lost in painful reflections, Trirodov did not hear the noise of the departing carriage; the unexpected call of the dark-faced, fascinating visitor, with his flaming speech and his fiery eyes, stirred his memory like a midday dream, like an abrupt hallucination. “Who is his fiancée, and why is she here?” Trirodov asked himself. A strange, impossible idea came into his head. Did not Elisaveta once speak about him with rapture? Perhaps the unexpected visitor would take Elisaveta away from him, as he had taken her from Piotr. This misgiving tormented him. But Trirodov looked into the clearness of her eyes on the portrait taken recently and at the grace and loveliness of her body and suddenly consoled himself. He thought: “She is mine.” * * * * * But Elisaveta, musing and burning, was experiencing passionate dreams; and she felt the tediousness of the grey monotony of her dull life. The strange vision suddenly appearing to her in those terrible moments in the wood repeated itself persistently--and it seemed to her that it was not another but she herself who was experiencing a parallel life, that she was passing the exultantly bright, joyous, and sad way of Queen Ortruda. THE END FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Also the scene of Sologub’s “Little Demon.”] [Footnote 2: Footpath of the dead.]