His voice broke, and something like a sob escaped his lips. Then he seized the wine, drank it down at a draught, and dashed the cup upon the table. His eyes were blazing.

“Let each man live the life he wills!” he cried. “The past do you throw over your shoulder, and then fill the cup again. Even though the soul perish, a fig for wine’s effects upon the unruly head, so long only as the old man may sleep his last long night away without dreams and without remembrance! Will he not have drunk all, have lived all? And has not the merchandise already been lying over-long in the merchant’s store? Let him, then, give it away for nothing. Yet a time there was when he would not have yielded it for a single groat under its value; when he would have shed in its defence the blood both of friend and of foe; when the purchaser would have had to give his very soul to conclude the bargain. . . . Pour out the wine again, Katerina!”

But even as he stretched out his hand it fell to his side. He was now breathing with difficulty, and his head was drooping. Again he shot a stern look at Ordynov, but the fire of his gaze had grown much dimmer, and presently his eyelids closed, and a mortal pallor overspread his features. His lips moved as though he would have spoken again, while a tear which had sprung to his eyelashes started to roll slowly over his cheek.

Ordynov could bear the scene no longer. He rose, staggered forward, and took Katerina by the hand. Yet she never looked at him, but seemed to have forgotten his presence as completely as though she had never been acquainted with him. Moreover, she appeared to have lost all sense of reality, and to be a prey to some one fixed idea. Sinking upon her knees beside the unconscious Murin, she took him in her arms, and fixed her gaze upon him as though it were riveted to his form. For a time she seemed to be wholly unaware that Ordynov was still holding her hand; but at length she threw him a long and piercing look, while her lips curled with a bitter smile.

“Go! Away with you!” she said under her breath. “You are drunken! You are a villain! You are no longer our guest!”

Again she turned to the old man—listening to his breathing, and watching tensely over him as he slumbered.

Despair and rage crushed Ordynov’s heart as in a vice.

“Katerina, Katerina!” he murmured as he pressed her hand. Her features contracted, and she raised her head; yet in her face there was such mockery, insolence, and contempt that Ordynov could scarcely bear the sight. Slowly she pointed to the old man, while in her eyes Ordynov could read all the disdainful hatred of his old enemy, all the wounding iciness of his glance.

“He will only kill you,” he said, no longer able to contain his wrath.