Accordingly, I was not surprised to receive an urgent message from Sophia, late one evening, requesting me to come to her without delay.
By this time our friendship, if such it could be called, had become so intimate that I visited her nearly every day on one pretext or another.
Her greeting, as soon as I had obeyed the summons, showed me that a fresh development had taken place in the situation.
“Andreas, the hour has come!”
“The hour?”
“For your removal. Petrovitch has been here. He suspects something. He has rebuked me severely for the delay.”
“Did you tell him I was not an easy man to kill?”
“I told him anything and everything. He would not listen. He says they have lost confidence in me. He was brutal. He said——”
“Well, what did he say?”
“He said—” she spoke slowly and shamefacedly—“that he perceived it took a man to kill a man.”