"Leave me alone! Leave me alone!" I cried. "Let us part. I am nothing to you--you despise me and laugh at me--you have from the first done so. It was because you laughed at me that she began to laugh. If you had not been there she might have continued to love me--she was very inexperienced. And now that she is gone I am of no more importance to you--let me be! For God's sake, let me be!" "You are free," he said. "You can return to Mittoevo in an hour's time when the wagons go." I did not speak. "No, you will not go," he went on, "because you think that she is here. She died here--and you believe that she is not dead. I also will not go--for my own reasons." Then he jumped off his bed, stood upright against me, his clothes touching mine. He put his hand on my shoulder. "No, Mr., we will remain together. I find you really rather charming. And you are changed, you know. You are not the silly fool you were when you first came to us!" I moved away from him. I could not bear the touch of his hand on my shoulder. I had, I repeat, no fear of him. He might laugh at me or no as he pleased, but I did not want his kindness. "My beliefs seem to you the beliefs of a child," I said, trying to speak more calmly. "Well, then, leave me to them. They at least do you no harm. I love her now as I loved her when I first saw her. I cannot believe that I shall never be with her again. But that is my own affair and matters to no one but myself!" He answered me: "You have a simple fashion of looking at things which I envy you. I assure you that I am not laughing at you. You believe, if I understand you, that after your death you will meet her again. You are afraid that if I die before you she will belong to me, but that if you die first you will be with her again as you were 'at the beginning'?... Is not that so?" I did not answer him. "I swear to you," he continued, "that I am not mocking you. What my own thoughts may be does not interest you, but I have not, in my life, found many things or persons that are worth one's devotion, and she was worthy of being loved as you love her. Such days as these in such a place as this must bring strange thoughts to any man. When we return to Mittoevo to-morrow night I assure you that you will see everything differently." He felt, I suppose, that he had been speaking too seriously because the ironic humour with which he always treated me returned. "Here, Mr., at any rate we are. I'm sorry for you--tiresome to be tied to some one as uncongenial as myself--but be a little sorry for me, too. You're not, you know, the ideal companion I would have chosen." "Why did you come?" I asked him. "Durward was here--we were doing very well--"