Hyde committee. The first, accusing me of lying to the

suddenly changed. His tone of assumed arrogance and helpless

defiance was gone. Even his voice was suddenly weak. "I told you

yesterday that I was not coming to ask forgiveness and almost the

first thing I've said is to ask forgiveness.... I said that about

Luzhin and Providence for my own sake. I was asking forgiveness,

He tried to smile, but there was something helpless and incomplete

in his pale smile. He bowed his head and hid his face in his hands.

And suddenly a strange, surprising sensation of a sort of bitter