He came into my room with his habitual, rapid, but deliberate step. His
face struck me as pale, and though it showed traces of the fatigue of
the journey, there was an expression of astonishment, curiosity, and
dissatisfaction--emotions of which he had little experience as a rule. I
rushed up to him, embraced him, warmly thanked him for obeying me, and
after briefly describing my conversation with Susanna, handed him the
manuscript. He went off to the window, to the very window in which
Susanna had sat two days before, and without a word to me, he fell to
reading it. I at once retired to the opposite corner of the room, and
for appearance' sake took up a book; but I must own I was stealthily
looking over the edge of the cover all the while at Fustov. At first he
read rather calmly, and kept pulling with his left hand at the down on
his lip; then he let his hand drop, bent forward and did not stir again.
His eyes seemed to fly along the lines and his mouth slightly opened. At
last he finished the manuscript, turned it over, looked round, thought a
little, and began reading it all through a second time from beginning to
end. Then he got up, put the manuscript in his pocket and moved towards
the door; but he turned round and stopped in the middle of the room.
'Well, what do you think?' I began, not waiting for him to speak.
'I have acted wrongly towards her,' Fustov declared thickly. 'I have
behaved... rashly, unpardonably, cruelly. I believed that... Viktor--'
'What!' I cried; 'that Viktor whom you despise so! But what could he say
to you?'
Fustov crossed his arms and stood obliquely to me. He was ashamed, I saw
that.
'Do you remember,' he said with some effort, 'that... Viktor alluded
to... a pension. That unfortunate word stuck in my head. It's the cause
of everything. I began questioning him.... Well, and he--'
'What did he say?'
'He told me that the old man... what's his name?... Koltovsky, had
allowed Susanna that pension because... on account of... well, in fact,
by way of damages.'