‘“I don’t know,” he replied as before. I went off again without even saying good-bye to my parents. I visited all the convents, but no nun bore her name, and no one had heard anything of her. I went to Moscow, to the Czar, to the pious Theodore, in whose service I had been, and I laid a charge against my father by telling him what I have now told you. He sent a judge to Olonets and had my father examined, but he denied, as before, that he knew anything about Annita; perhaps bribed the judge as well—he was rich enough to do it. After an absence of two years I returned to my saddened home. ‘“You have been complaining of me to the Czar,” said my father. ‘“Yes,” I replied. ‘“You wanted to have your own father punished as a criminal.” ‘“Yes; because you would not tell me the truth.” ‘“Well, then, I have now just one word to say to you, and that will be the last word spoken between us.” ‘“Say it, then.” ‘“If you don’t marry Theodora, I shall order my servants to remove you by force from the house, and then I disinherit you.” ‘“I will not marry Theodora.” ‘“Very well, then, you are no longer my son.” ‘“Be it so,” I said. “Nothing more can wound or grieve me. I am deaf and dead to all the feelings of a son towards his father, and to all his father’s threats. I, too, have made my decision.” ‘“And I should like to know what that may be?” ‘“I am going to be a monk, and shall enter a monastery. I renounce the estates and the property, and everything else in this world.” ‘“And all for the sake of a beggar-girl.” ‘“Yes, for the sake of a poor, harmless, forlorn girl—for the sake of the one woman whom I have loved, and whom I have lost, and of whom my own father has deprived me.” ‘“As you will,” said my father, but he hardly believed that I was in earnest. I made one more desperate journey to seek for some trace of Annita. At a place in Karelen I was informed that one Sunday a young couple, who were travelling, had been at church there, and as they were driving off again, the young woman, when they were crossing a bridge, either threw herself, or fell into the river and was drowned. But who they were nobody knew. I called on the priest of the parish, and asked him, but he could not remember that he had heard the names of Annita or Anthony, and he had never married persons so named.