before my eyes."

And he went out, clearing his throat. Afterwards from the window I
saw him by the stable, harnessing the horses with his own hands.
His hands were trembling, he was in nervous haste and kept looking
round at the house; probably he was feeling terror. Then he got
into the gig, and, with a strange expression as though afraid of
being pursued, lashed the horses.

Shortly afterwards I set off, too. The sun was already rising, and
the mist of the previous day clung timidly to the bushes and the
hillocks. On the box of the carriage was sitting Forty Martyrs; he
had already succeeded in getting drunk and was muttering tipsy
nonsense.

"I am a free man," he shouted to the horses. "Ah, my honeys, I am
a nobleman in my own right, if you care to know!"

The terror of Dmitri Petrovitch, the thought of whom I could not
get out of my head, infected me. I thought of what had happened and
could make nothing of it. I looked at the rooks, and it seemed so
strange and terrible that they were flying.

"Why have I done this?" I kept asking myself in bewilderment and
despair. "Why has it turned out like this and not differently? To
whom and for what was it necessary that she should love me in
earnest, and that he should come into my room to fetch his cap?
What had a cap to do with it?"

I set off for Petersburg that day, and I have not seen Dmitri