"In a flash," he went on, "it came over me what her presence meant, and I said to myself, 'I will kill him!' I had always hoped that in striking against the creatures of the Czar's tyranny I might unknowingly reach the man that had harmed her; but I had wished not to know, for I could not bear that personal feeling should come into the work I did for my country. That work was the one sacred thing. Now what I had feared had been thrust on me. Shurochka was changed; there were marks of suffering in her face, and she showed, too, the effects of training which could never have come honestly into the life of a woman of her station. She was dressed like a lady. At first she did not know me. She spoke to me as a stranger, and implored me to save Kakonzoff. She caught me by the arm in her excitement; and then she recognized me. Then--oh, my God, what creatures women are!--then she cried out that I had loved her once, and that in memory of that time I must help her. Think of it! She flung my broken heart in my face to induce me to save the scoundrel she loved! "It was Alexandrina, my old-time Shurochka, clinging to me as if she had risen from the grave where her shame should have been hidden, and I loved her then and always. I could hardly control myself to speak to her. All I could do was stupidly to ask if he was kind to her, and she shrank as if I had lashed her with the knout. She cried out that it was no matter, so long as she loved him, and that I must save him: that she could not live without him. I--could n't endure it! I shook off her hands and rushed away more wild than sane, with her voice in my ears all agony and despair." His face was dreadful in its pain, and I felt that I had no right to see it. I closed my eyes, and tried to turn away a little, but in my clumsiness I knocked from the couch a book. The crash of its fall aroused him. He mechanically picked up the volume, and the act seemed somewhat to restore him to himself. "You may judge," he began again, "the hell that I was in. I could have torn the man to bits, and yet--and yet now I said to myself that to obey the Section and let Kakonzoff die would be doing a murder to gratify personal hate. Yet all the sides of the question tortured me. I asked the valet in the afternoon about the woman that had spoken to me. He shrugged his shoulders, and said she was only a peasant that the general was tired of, but that she would not leave him, although he beat her. He beat her!" There were tears in my eyes at the intensity with which he spoke, but Dr. Polnitzski's were dry. He clenched his strong hands as if he were crushing something. Then he shook himself as if he were awaking, and threw back his head with a bitter attempt at a laugh. "Bah!" he exclaimed, with a shrug. "I have never talked like this in my life, but it is so many years since I talked at all that I have lost control of myself. I beg your pardon." He crossed the room, sat down by the fire, and began to fill his pipe.