The visitor observed his host’s agitation with satisfaction; he went on with his share of the talking with more confidence. “What am I to go on about?” he asked. “Imagine me, Alexey Ivanovitch—a broken man,—not simply broken, but gone at the root, as it were; a man forced to change his whole manner of living, after twenty years of married life, wandering about the dusty roads without an object,—mind lost—almost oblivious of his own self,—and yet, as it were, taking some sort of intoxicated delight in his loneliness! Isn’t it natural that if I should, at such a moment of self-forgetfulness come across a friend—even a _dear_ friend, I might prefer to avoid him for that moment? and isn’t it equally natural that at another moment I should long to see and speak with some one who has been an eye-witness of, or a partaker, so to speak, in my never-to-be-recalled past? and to rush—not only in the day, but at night, if it so happens,—to rush to the embrace of such a man?—yes, even if one has to wake him up at three in the morning to do it! I was wrong in my time, not in my estimate of my friend, though, for at this moment I feel the full rapture of success; my rash action has been successful: I have found sympathy! As for the time of night, I confess I thought it was not twelve yet! You see, one sups of grief, and it intoxicates one,—at least, not grief, exactly, it’s more the condition of mind—the new state of things that affects me.” “Dear me, how oddly you express yourself!” said Velchaninoff, rising from his seat once more, and becoming quite serious again. “Oddly, do I? Perhaps.” “Look here: are you joking?” “Joking!” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, in shocked surprise; “_joking_—at the very moment when I am telling you of——” “Oh—be quiet about that! for goodness sake.” Velchaninoff started off on his journey up and down the room again. So matters stood for five minutes or so: the visitor seemed inclined to rise from his chair, but Velchaninoff bade him sit still, and Pavel Pavlovitch obediently flopped into his seat again. “How changed you are!” said the host at last, stopping in front of the other chair, as though suddenly struck with the idea; “fearfully changed!” “Wonderful! you’re quite another man!” “That’s hardly surprising! _nine_ years, sir!” “No, no, no! years have nothing to do with it! it’s not in appearance you are so changed: it’s something else!” “Well, sir, the nine years might account for anything.” “Perhaps it’s only since March, eh?” “Ha-ha! you are playful, sir,” said Pavel Pavlovitch, laughing slyly. “But, if I may ask it, wherein am I so changed?” “Oh—why, you used to be such a staid, sober, correct Pavel Pavlovitch; such a wise Pavel Pavlovitch; and now you’re a good-for-nothing sort of Pavel Pavlovitch.” Velchaninoff was in that state of irritation when the steadiest, gravest people will sometimes say rather more than they mean.