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RUDIN was then that I too threw him over. That’s all.’

Lezhnyov ceased speaking, passed his hand over his brow, and dropped into a chair as if he were exhausted.

‘Do you know, Mihailo Mihailitch,’ began Alexandra Pavlovna, ‘you are a spiteful person, I see; indeed you are no better than Pigasov. I am convinced that all you have told me is true, that you have not made up anything, and yet in what an unfavourable light you have put it all! The poor old mother, her devotion, her solitary death, and that lady—What does it all amount to? You know that it’s easy to put the life of the best of men in such colours—and without adding anything, observe—that every one would be shocked! But that too is slander of a kind!’

Lezhnyov got up and again walked about the room.

‘I did not want to shock you at all, Alexandra Pavlovna,’ he brought out at last, ‘I am not given to slander. However,’ he added, after a moment’s thought, ‘in reality there is a foundation of fact in what you said. I did not mean 97