“You rascal!” he said to Vankin. “Why have you covered me with mud before the whole world? Why have you slandered me?”
“How; what slander? What are you inventing?”
“And who told everybody that I was kissing Marfa? Not you, perhaps? Not you, you murderer?”
Vankin began to blink his eyes, and all the fibres of his face began to quiver. He lifted his eyes toward the image and ejaculated:
“May God punish me, may I lose my eyesight and die, if I said even a single word about you to any one! May I have neither house nor home!”
Vankin’s sincerity admitted of no doubt. It was evident that it was not he who had gossiped.
“But who was it? Who?” Akhineyev asked himself, going over in his mind all his acquaintances, and striking his chest. “Who was it?”