“Why should I go to him?” answered the doctor in confusion. “What next?”

Before sunset he had walked several times along the boulevard and the street in the hope of meeting Laevsky. He was ashamed of his hastiness and the sudden outburst of friendliness which had followed it. He wanted to apologise to Laevsky in a joking tone, to give him a good talking to, to soothe him and to tell him that the duel was a survival of mediæval barbarism, but that Providence itself had brought them to the duel as a means of reconciliation; that the next day, both being splendid and highly intelligent people, they would, after exchanging shots, appreciate each other’s noble qualities and would become friends. But he could not come across Laevsky.

“What should I go and see him for?” repeated Samoylenko. “I did not insult him; he insulted me. Tell me, please, why he attacked me. What harm had I done him? I go into the drawing-room, and, all of a sudden, without the least provocation: ‘Spy!’There’s a nice thing! Tell me, how did it begin? What did you say to him?”

“I told him his position was hopeless. And I was right. It is only honest men or scoundrels who can find an escape from any position, but one who wants to be at the same time an honest man and a scoundrel—it is a hopeless position. But it’s eleven o’clock, gentlemen, and we have to be up early to-morrow.”

There was a sudden gust of wind; it blew up the dust on the seafront, whirled it round in eddies, with a howl that drowned the roar of the sea.

“A squall,” said the deacon. “We must go in, our eyes are getting full of dust.”

As they went, Samoylenko sighed and, holding his hat, said:

“I suppose I shan’t sleep to-night.”

“Don’t you agitate yourself,” laughed the zoologist. “You can set your mind at rest; the duel will end in nothing. Laevsky will magnanimously fire into the air—he can do nothing else; and I daresay I shall not fire at all. To be arrested and lose my time on Laevsky’s account—the game’s not worth the candle. By the way, what is the punishment for duelling?”

“Arrest, and in the case of the death of your opponent a maximum of three years’imprisonment in the fortress.”

“The fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul?”

“No, in a military fortress, I believe.”

“Though this fine gentleman ought to have a lesson!”

Behind them on the sea, there was a flash of lightning, which for an instant lighted up the roofs of the houses and the mountains. The friends parted near the boulevard. When the doctor disappeared in the darkness and his steps had died away, Von Koren shouted to him:

“I only hope the weather won’t interfere with us to-morrow!”

“Very likely it will! Please God it may!”

“Good-night!”

“What about the night? What do you say?”

In the roar of the wind and the sea and the crashes of thunder, it was difficult to hear.