It was a good thing that it was this week, for next week he was going abroad for two or three months; he had said so himself yesterday, so that both she and Silla heard it.
Nikolai sat quite pale. His mouth moved as if it were trembling, and he wiped his forehead once or twice with his sleeve.
He looked slowly up at his mother; it was as if he were afraid of getting to hate her.
"You shall have the money."
He felt he was on the point of bursting into tears, and must get away to have his rage out.
It was another postponement for him and Silla until the spring. And where was the end of it to be?
His hand shook and fumbled with the door-handle.
This fresh piece of information, which his mother had so unexpectedly given Nikolai, that it was he who had destroyed her well-being, was like yet another stone weighing him down.
It crushed him like a moral defeat. He could not rid himself of the thought that there was something in it. He felt his courage was weakened, and he went about disheartened.
He had lost another quarter as to his prospects of getting married, and if his mother required or rather claimed money from him again for her down-hill trade, what could he do?