These last words Vassilyev pronounced in a faint, failing voice. He was exhausted, and sank into silence. A pause followed. I began scrutinising his face. It was as pale as a dead man’s. It seemed as though life were almost extinct in him, and only the signs of the suffering that the “vain and fatuous” man was feeling betrayed that it was still alive. It was painful to look at that face, but what must it have been for Vassilyev himself who yet had the strength to argue and, if I were not mistaken, to pose?

“You here⁠—are you here?” he asked suddenly, raising himself on his elbow. “My God, just listen!”

I began listening. The rain was pattering angrily on the dark window, never ceasing for a minute. The wind howled plaintively and lugubriously.

“ ‘And I shall be whiter than snow, and my ears will hear gladness and rejoicing.’ ” Madame Mimotih, who had returned, was reading in the drawing room in a languid, weary voice, neither raising nor dropping the monotonous dreary key.

“It is cheerful, isn’t it?” whispered Vassilyev, turning his frightened eyes towards me. “My God, the things a man has to see and hear! If only one could set this chaos to music! As Hamlet says, ‘it would⁠—’ ”

“Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed,

The very faculties of eyes and ears.”

“Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed, The very faculties of eyes and ears.”

“How well I should have understood that music then! How I should have felt it! What time is it?”

“Five minutes to three.”