"Don't lecture me, if you please," he said dully. "I don't justify
myself, however. I have ruined her life and now I must pay the
penalty...."

His head sank and he was silent. I found nothing to say, either.

XI

So we sat for a quarter of an hour. He looked away--I looked at
him--and I noticed that the hair stood up and curled above his
forehead in a peculiar way, which, so I have heard from an army doctor
who had had a great many wounded pass through his hands, is always a
symptom of intense overheating of the brain.... The thought struck me
again that fate really had laid a heavy hand on this man and that his
comrades were right in seeing something "fatal" in him. And yet
inwardly I blamed him. "A working-class girl!" I thought, "a fine sort
of aristocrat you are yourself!"

"Perhaps you blame me, Ridel," Tyeglev began suddenly, as though
guessing what I was thinking. "I am very ... unhappy myself. But what
to do? What to do?"

He leaned his chin on his hand and began biting the broad flat nails
of his short, red fingers, hard as iron.

"What I think, Ilya Stepanitch, is that you ought first to make
certain whether your suppositions are correct.... Perhaps your lady
love is alive and well." ("Shall I tell him the real explanation of
the taps?" flashed through my mind. "No--later.")