"The subscription list," she said severely, "is always downstairs in charge of my porter. There you can enter your subscriptions if you wish to. And so I beg you to put your notes away and not to wave them in the air. That's right. I beg you also to go back to your seat. That's right. I am very sorry, sir, that I made a mistake about your sister, and gave her something as though she were poor when she is so rich. There's only one thing I don't understand, why she can only take from me, and no one else. You so insisted upon that that I should like a full explanation." "Madam, that is a secret that may be buried only in the grave!" answered the captain. "Why?" Varvara Petrovna asked, not quite so firmly. "Madam, madam..." He relapsed into gloomy silence, looking on the floor, laying his right hand on his heart. Varvara Petrovna waited, not taking her eyes off him. "Madam!" he roared suddenly. "Will you allow me to ask you one question? Only one, but frankly, directly, like a Russian, from the heart?" "Kindly do so." "Have you ever suffered madam, in your life?" "You simply mean to say that you have been or are being ill-treated by someone." "Madam, madam!" He jumped up again, probably unconscious of doing so, and struck himself on the breast. "Here in this bosom so much has accumulated, so much that God Himself will be amazed when it is revealed at the Day of Judgment." "H'm! A strong expression!" "Madam, I speak perhaps irritably...." "Don't be uneasy. I know myself when to stop you." "May I ask you another question, madam?" "Ask another question." "Can one die simply from the generosity of one's feelings?" "I don't know, as I've never asked myself such a question." "You don't know! You've never asked yourself such a question," he said with pathetic irony. "Well, if that's it, if that's it... _"Be still, despairing heart!"_ And he struck himself furiously on the chest. He was by now walking about the room again.