The conversation having been given this serious turn, first one and then another of Etheridge's guests recalled stories of sins that had worked in lives as worms through a ship's planks. Tweed mocked. He was rarely grave, but his easy heart was valued by all who knew him. He said, "You will all give yourselves a nightmare at bedtime. Come, let us have a murder yarn to wind up with."
And so Vassilitch, who was no stranger to the fatalism of the Slav, and who on that account had listened with considerable interest to the dialogue, had suddenly roused himself to utter his views expressed above.
"I will repeat my advice," said he. "If you ever kill a man do not think about it afterwards. Ah! the fantasies that we invent to torment ourselves with!"
Gabrielle was compelled to look at the speaker once more. As the guests of Etheridge they had seen much of one another during the past three days. She liked to have him by her side because he was her countryman; also, to her eyes, he appeared to be the strongest man in the company. And he? Whenever Mademoiselle Rupinsky came in late he was silent to taciturnity; and when she took her place he thawed.
"You are not—you cannot be—in earnest?" said Gabrielle.
"Never more so, mademoiselle."
"It is your profession that has killed your sentiment," explained Etheridge.
"As you will."
Clearly they were all waiting for him to continue. He perceived that he was the centre of observation, of interest—Ivan Féodor Vassilitch, sometime captain of a Cossack regiment that had made a reputation for hardihood and valour unique even amongst those northern soldiers whose nerves have the iron coldness of their ice-plains. He raised his glass, emptied it, and went on:—
"I tell you, my friends, that if circumstance compels you to such an act as I have spoken of, then any future terrors must be entirely the product of a superstitious imagination. No spirit will haunt you save that which you yourself conjure by bending the mind continually to that idea. No worm of remorse will tear your peace unless you believe liars who tell you it exists."