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304 impossible to avoid a conversation with me, if I think a conversation is necessary. Indeed, I could have told you this long ago, but I held my peace. So if I speak now, it is because it is necessary to speak. I do not say anything before it is necessary. You saw how I kept the note ten hours in my pocket, though it was pitiful to look at you; but it was necessary not to speak, and I did not speak. Consequently, if I speak now, it shows that I thought long ago about Dmitri Sergéitch's relations towards you; thus, of course, it was necessary to speak about them."

"No, I do not want to listen," said Viéra Pavlovna, greatly stirred. "I ask you to be silent, Rakhmétof. I beg of you to go. I am very much obliged to you for wasting an evening on my account, but I beg you to leave me."

"Are you in earnest?"

"In earnest."

"Very well," he said laughing. "It's all right, Viéra Pavlovna, but you cannot get rid of me so easily; I foresaw that this would happen and I provided for it. The little note which I burned up, he wrote of his own accord; but this he wrote according to my request; this I can leave in your hands because it is not a proof. Here it is."

Rakhmétof gave Viéra Pavlovna this note:—

"Twenty-third of July; two o'clock in the morning. Dear friend Viérotchka, listen to everything that Rakhmétof will have to say to you. I do not know what he wants to tell you; I have not authorized him to say anything; he has not given me the least hint that he wants to speak to you, but i know that he never says anything but what he thinks is necessary. Yours, D. L."

Viéra Pavlovna kissed this note, God knows how many times.

"Why didn't you let me have it before. You probably have something else of his?"

"No, I have nothing more, because nothing more was necessary. Why didn't I let you have it? Until there was necessity, there was no need of giving it to you."

"Bozhe moï! Why so? For the sake of my own pleasure in having some lines from him, now that he has gone from me!"

"Well, if it was only for that reason, nu, that was not very important." He smiled.

"Akh, Rakhmétof, you want to tease me!"