Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VII).djvu/226

Rh still a possibility of extricating yourself without scandal or dishonour.'

'Without scandal or dishonour ' Markelov repeated grimly. 'We know those phrases! They are always used to suggest a man's doing something scoundrelly. That's what they mean!'

'We sympathise with you,' Sipyagin continued to exhort Markelov, 'and you hate us.'

'A nice sort of sympathy! You pack us off to Siberia to hard labour; that's how you show your sympathy for us! Ah, let me alone let me alone, for mercy's sake!'

And Markelov's head sank on his breast. There was great confusion in his soul, quiet as he was outwardly. More than all he was fretted and tortured by the thought that he had been betrayed by none other than Eremey of Goloplyok! Eremey in whom he had believed so blindly! That Mendely, the Sulker, had not followed him had not really surprised him. Mendely had been drunk and was frightened. But Eremey! To Markelov, Eremey was a sort of personification of the Russian peasantry. And he had deceived him. Then, was all Markelov had been toiling for, was it all wrong, a mistake? And was Kislyakov a liar, and were Vassily Nikolaevitch's orders folly, and were all the articles and books, works