Page 270 of 1294

He walked, looking about him angrily and distractedly. All his

ideas now seemed to be circling round some single point, and he

felt that there really was such a point, and that now, now, he

was left facing that point--and for the first time, indeed,

during the last two months.

"Damn it all!" he thought suddenly, in a fit of ungovernable

fury. "If it has begun, then it has begun. Hang the new life!

Good Lord, how stupid it is!... And what lies I told to-day! How

despicably I fawned upon that wretched Ilya Petrovitch! But that

is all folly! What do I care for them all, and my fawning upon

them! It is not that at all! It is not that at all!"

Suddenly he stopped; a new utterly unexpected and exceedingly

simple question perplexed and bitterly confounded him.