“I didn’t mean that exactly.”

“If you didn’t mean that, then she has only to go down the steps and walk off, and she need never come back unless she chooses. Ships are burned behind one sometimes, and one doesn’t care to return whence one came. Life need not consist only of lunches, and dinners, and Prince S⁠⸺’s. It strikes me you take Aglaya Ivanovna for some conventional boarding-school girl. I said so to her, and she quite agreed with me. Wait till seven or eight o’clock. In your place I would send someone there to keep watch, so as to seize the exact moment when she steps out of the house. Send Colia. He’ll play the spy with pleasure⁠—for you at least. Ha, ha, ha!”

Hippolyte went out.