MY DEAREST MAKAR ALEXIEVITCH,—Your latest conduct and letters had frightened me, and left me thunderstruck and plunged¹ in doubt, until what you have said about Thedor explained the situation. Why despair and go into such frenzies², Makar Alexievitch? Your explanations only partially³ satisfy me. Perhaps I did wrong to insist upon accepting a good situation when it was offered me, seeing that from my last experience in that way I derived⁴ a shock which was anything but a matter for jesting. You say also that your love for me has compelled you to hide yourself in retirement⁵. Now, how much I am indebted to you I realised when you told me that you were spending for my benefit the sum which you are always reported to have laid by at your bankers; but, now that I have learned that you never possessed⁶ such a fund, but that, on hearing of my destitute⁷ plight⁸, and being moved by it, you decided⁹ to spend upon me the whole of your salary—even to forestall¹⁰ it—and when I had fallen ill, actually to sell your clothes—when I learned all this I found myself placed in the harassing¹¹ position of not knowing how to accept it all, nor what to think of it. Ah, Makar Alexievitch! You ought to have stopped at your first acts of charity—acts inspired by sympathy and the love of kinsfolk, rather than have continued to squander¹² your means upon what was unnecessary. Yes, you have betrayed our friendship, Makar Alexievitch, in that you have not been open with me; and, now that I see that your last coin has been spent upon dresses and bon-bons and excursions and books and visits to the theatre for me, I weep bitter tears for my unpardonable improvidence¹³ in having accepted these things without giving so much as a thought to your welfare. Yes, all that you have done to give me pleasure has become converted into a source of grief, and left behind it only useless regret. Of late I have remarked that you were looking depressed¹⁴; and though I felt fearful that something unfortunate was impending¹⁵, what has happened would otherwise never have entered my head. To think that your better sense should so play you false, Makar Alexievitch! What will people think of you, and say of you? Who will want to know you? You whom, like everyone else, I have valued for your goodness of heart and modesty¹⁶ and good sense—YOU, I............