"But," I said, "before I say anything, I want you to tell me what you think happened and why it happened."
"Well," said the doctor, "to begin with, I understand, both from your story as well as from his, that Kranitski and Miss Brandon were engaged to be married and that the engagement was broken off. But I also understood from your MS. that the man Canning was for nothing in the rupture of the engagement. It happened before he arrived. It was due, in my opinion, to something which happened to Kranitski.
"Now, what do we know about Kranitski as related by you? First of all, that he was for a long time attached to a Russian lady who was married, and who would not divorce because of her children.
"Then, from what he told you, we know that although a believing Catholic he said he had been outside the Church for seven years. That meant, obviously, that he had not been pratiquant. That is exactly what would have happened if he had been living with a married woman and meant to go on doing so. Then when he arrives at Haréville, he tells you that the obstacle to his practising his religion no longer exists. Kranitski makes the acquaintance of Miss Brandon, or rather renews his old acquaintance with her, and becomes intimate with her. Princess Kouragine finds she is becoming a different being. You go away for a month, and when you come back she almost tells you she is engaged—it is the same as if she told you. The very next day Kranitski meets you, about to spend a day at the lakes with Miss Brandon and evidently not sad—on the contrary. He received a letter in your presence. You are aware after he has read this letter of a sudden change in him.
"Then a few days later he comes to see you and announces a change of plans, and says he is going to Africa. He also gives you to understand that the obstacle has not come back into his life. What obstacle? It can only be one thing, the obstacle he told you of, which was preventing him from practising his religion.
"Now, what do we learn from the novel?
"We learn from the novel that the day after that expedition to the lakes, Rudd describes the Russian having a conversation with the novelist (himself) in which he tells the novelist, firstly, that he is going away, probably to Africa. So far we know that he was telling the truth. Then he says that just as he found himself, as he thought, free, an old debt or tie or obligation rises up from the past which has to be paid or regarded or met. Rudd, in the person of Arkright, thinks he is inventing. They talk of conflicts and divided duties and the choice between two duties. The Russian is made to say that the most difficult complication is when duty and pleasure are both on one side and an obligation is on the other side, and one has to choose between them. The novelist gives no explanation of this, he treats it merely as a gratuitous piece of embroidery—a fantasy.
"Now, I believe the Russian said what Rudd makes him say, because if he didn't it doesn't seem to me like the kind of fantasy the novelist would have invented had he been inventing. If he had been inventing, I think he would have found something else."
"All the same," I interrupted, "we don't know whether he said that."
"We don't know whether he said anything at all," said Sabran.