Samoylenko tapped softly at the window. Laevsky started and looked round.
“Vanya, Nikolay Vassilitch wants to say goodbye to you,” said Samoylenko. “He is just going away.”
Laevsky got up from the table, and went into the passage to open the door. Samoylenko, the zoologist, and the deacon went into the house.
“I can only come for one minute,” began the zoologist, taking off his goloshes in the passage, and already wishing he had not given way to his feelings and come in, uninvited. “It is as though I were forcing myself on him,” he thought, “and that’s stupid.”
“Forgive me for disturbing you,” he said as he went into the room with Laevsky, “but I’m just going away, and I had an impulse to see you. God knows whether we shall ever meet again.”
“I am very glad to see you. . . . Please come in,” said Laevsky, and he awkwardly set chairs for his visitors as though he wanted to bar their way, and stood in the middle of the room, rubbing his hands.
“I should have done better to have left my audience in the street,” thought Von Koren, and he said firmly: “Don’t remember evil against me, Ivan Andreitch. To forget the past is, of course, impossible —it is too painful, and I’ve not come here to apologise or to declare that I was not to blame. I acted sincerely, and I have not changed my convictions since then. . . . It is true that I see, to my great delight, that I was mistaken in regard to you, but it’s easy to make a false step even on a smooth road, and, in fact, it’s the natural human lot: if one is not mistaken in the main, one is mistaken in the details. Nobody knows the real truth.”
“No, no one knows the truth,” said Laevsky.
“Well, good-bye. . . . God give you all happiness.”
Von Koren gave Laevsky his hand; the latter took it and bowed.