Yatsek poured into the glasses mechanically, following at the same time the course of his own thoughts.
"Pan Gideon," said he, "might be offended because the duel began at his mansion, though such things happen everywhere; but now he knows that I did not challenge, he knows that he offended me under my own roof unjustly, he knows that with you I am now in agreement, and that I shall not appear at his house again,--still he pursues me, still he is trying to trample me."
"True, there is some kind of special animosity in this," said Pan Serafin.
"Ha! then there is as you think something in it?"
"In what?" asked the priest, who had come out with a letter now written, and heard the last sentence.
"In this special hatred against me."
The priest looked at a shelf on which among other books was the Holy Bible, and said,--
"That which I will say to thee now I said long ago: there is a woman in it." Here he turned to those present. "Have I repeated to you, gentlemen, what Ecclesiastes says about woman?"
But he could not finish, for Yatsek sprang up as if burnt by living fire. He thrust his fingers through his hair and almost screamed, for immense pain had seized him.
"Still more do I fail to understand; for if any one in the world--if to any one in the world--if there be any one of such kind--then with my whole soul--"