“It is a great deal that you wish to know at once, little bird who are trying your wings and burning to use them. Very well. Pour me out another cupful of wine, so that I may first drink to your liberation; otherwise I might be unable to avert the black eye from my will-power. For the devil, as you know, is strong, and evil is not very far from here.”

With these words he raised his glass, and emptied it; but the more he drank, the paler he grew, and the more his eyes glowed like twin coals until, coupled with the fearful pallor of his countenance, they seemed almost to presage another fit. As for Ordynov, the wine was so strong that a single cupful of it had sufficed to obscure his vision, to inflame his blood, and to weaken his will-power. Consequently, in accepting a second cupful, he hardly knew the reason for his action—unless it was that he sought by its means to steady his nerves. Yet no sooner had he drunk it than the blood poured the faster through his veins, and he became a prey to such giddiness that, try as he might, he found it difficult to follow what was passing around him.

The old man dashed his cup upon the table.

“Fill it again, Katerina!” he cried. “Fill it again, O woman of misfortune! Fill it for me till death shall come—until the old man shall have sunk into his last long sleep, and you are rid of him at last! But for the present let us drink together. Why do you not drink? Do you suppose that I have not observed your failing to do so?”

Ordynov could not hear Katerina’s answer—and, moreover, Murin did not let her finish, since, unable, apparently, to contain himself any longer, he seized her by the hand. His face was now deadly pale, and though his eyes kept glowing and growing dull by turns, his lips were trembling unsteadily as he began——