A fortnight has passed. The narrator admits he has the greatest possible difficulty in accounting for the facts. All society has got hold of one and the same story, in a thousand varieties of detail. A certain young prince has thrown over a daughter of the family, to whom he was engaged, and has been captured by a woman of shady reputation. He means to marry at once, openly and publicly, with head erect, looking the whole world in the face. The marriage really is arranged. Keller is to be the prince's best man. Burdovsky is to give Nastasia away, to his great delight. The Epanchins break with him. Prince S. cuts him dead in the street. Evgenie Pavlovitch is not afraid to compromise himself by paying a visit.
Exactly an hour after Aglaya fled, the prince was at the Epanchins'. She had not been home. Varia arrives and states that Aglaya has been at her house in a terrible state of mind for the last hour, and that she refuses to come home. They denounce him in the strongest terms, and refuse any further acquaintance. He keeps going back, meeting with another refusal. Hippolyte sends for him on purpose to tell the candle story. She asked Gania whether he would consent to hold his finger to a lighted candle in proof of his devotion. The prince laughs so that he quite astonishes Hippolyte, and then shudders and bursts into tears.
It's all the same, says Evgenie. You ought to have run after Aglaya though the other was fainting. Yes, yes, I ought, but I couldn't. She would have died. She would have killed herself. You don't know her. Oh, no, I love her with all my soul. Why, she is a child. And are you assured, at the same time, that you love Aglaya too. Yes, yes, both. I do. Without Aglaya I must see Aglaya. I shall die in my sleep very soon. I cannot bear Nastasia Philipovna's face. I have never told anyone before, not even Aglaya. Come to her, quick. She is not in Pavlofsk. She's in Colmina. Take a letter for me. No. I can't undertake any such commissions. Evgenie leaves the house with strange convictions. The most probable explanation is that you never loved either the one or the other in reality. She loved like a woman, like a human being, not like an abstract spirit. Two different kinds of love, I suppose. This is very interesting. Poor idiot. What on earth will become of him now.
