She was slightly pale. But her calmness only reinforced her sarcasm. Oh, I forgave her much during that minute when I gradually came to grasp the matter. For a minute I thought it over; she waited in silence.
“You know,” I smiled suddenly, “you conveyed the letter, because for you there was no risk, because there will be no marriage, but what about him? And her, finally? Of course, she’ll turn down his proposal, and then . . . what may happen then? Where is he now, Anna Andreevna?” I cried. “Here every minute is precious, any minute there may be trouble!”
“He’s at home, I told you. In his letter to Katerina Nikolaevna yesterday, which I conveyed, he asked her, in any event, for a meeting at his apartment, today, at exactly seven o’clock in the evening. She gave her promise.”
“She’ll go to his apartment? How is it possible?”
“Why not? The apartment belongs to Nastasya Egorovna; they both could very well meet there as her guests . . .”
“But she’s afraid of him . . . he may kill her!”
Anna Andreevna only smiled.
“Katerina Nikolaevna, despite all her fear, which I’ve noticed in her myself, has always nursed, since former times, a certain reverence and awe for the nobility of Andrei Petrovich’s principles and the loftiness of his mind. She’s trusting herself to him this time so as to have done with him forever. In his letter he gave her his most solemn, most chivalrous word that she had nothing to fear . . . In short, I don’t remember the terms of his letter, but she’s trusting herself . . . so to speak, for the last time . . . and, so to speak, responding with the most heroic feelings. There may be some sort of chivalrous struggle here on both sides.”
“But the double, the double!” I exclaimed. “He really has lost his mind!”
“On giving her word yesterday that she would come to meet him, Katerina Nikolaevna probably didn’t suppose the possibility of such a case.”
I suddenly turned and broke into a run . . . To him, to them, of course! But I came back from the front room for a second.
“Maybe that’s just what you want, that he should kill her!” I cried, and ran out of the house.
Though I was trembling all over as if in a fit, I entered the apartment silently, through the kitchen, and asked in a whisper to have Nastasya Egorovna come out to me; but she came out at once herself and silently fixed me with a terribly questioning look.
“He’s not at home, sir.”
But I explained to her directly and precisely, in a quick whisper, that I knew everything from Anna Andreevna and had just come from her.
“Where are they, Nastasya Egorovna?”
“They’re in the drawing room, sir, where you were sitting two days ago, at the table . . .”
“Let me in there, Nastasya Egorovna!”
“How is that possible, sir?”
“Not there, but the room next to it. Nastasya Egorovna, it may be that Anna Andreevna herself wants it. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have told me they were here. They won’t hear me . . . she wants it herself . . .”
“And what if she doesn’t?” Nastasya Egorovna kept her gaze fixed on me.
“Nastasya Egorovna, I remember your Olya . . . let me in.”
Her lips and chin suddenly began to tremble:
“Dear heart, maybe for Olya’s sake . . . for your feeling . . . Don’t abandon Anna Andreevna, dear heart! You won’t abandon her, eh? You won’t?”
“I won’t!”
“Give me your great word, then, that you won’t rush in on them and start shouting, if I put you in there?”
“I swear on my honor, Nastasya Egorovna!”
She took hold of my frock coat, let me into the dark room adjacent to the one they were sitting in, led me barely audibly over the soft rug to the door, placed me just at the lowered portière and, lifting a tiny corner of the portière, showed me both of them.
I stayed and she left. Naturally, I stayed. I realized that I was eavesdropping, eavesdropping on other people’s secrets, but I stayed. How could I not stay—what of the double? Hadn’t he smashed an icon before my eyes?
IV
THEY WERE SITTING opposite each other at the same table at which he and I had drunk wine yesterday to his “resurrection.” I could see their faces very well. She was in a simple black dress, beautiful, and apparently calm, as always. He was speaking, and she was listening to him with extreme and obliging attention. Maybe a certain timidity could be seen in her. He was terribly agitated. I arrived when the conversation had already begun, and therefore understood nothing for a certain time. I remember she suddenly asked:
“And I was the cause?”
“No, it was I who was the cause,” he replied, “and you were only blamelessly to blame. Do you know that one can be blamelessly to blame? That is the most unpardonable blame, and it almost always gets punished,” he added, laughing strangely. “And I really thought for a moment that I had quite forgotten you, and I quite laughed at my stupid passion . . . but you know that. And, anyhow, what do I care about the man you’re about to marry? I proposed to you yesterday, forgive me for that, it was absurd, and yet there was no alternative . . . what could I have done except that absurdity? I don’t know . . .”
He laughed perplexedly at these words, suddenly raising his eyes to her; till that time he had spoken as if looking away. If I had been in her place, I would have been frightened by that laughter, I could feel it. He suddenly got up from his chair.
“Tell me, how could you have agreed to come here?” he asked suddenly, as if remembering the main thing. “My invitation and my whole letter were absurd . . . Wait, I may still guess how it happened that you agreed to come, but—why have you come?—that’s the question. Can it be that you came only out of fear?”
“I came to see you,” she said, studying him with timid wariness. They were both silent for half a minute. Versilov lowered himself onto the chair again and began in a meek but deeply moved, almost trembling voice:
“I haven’t seen you for a terribly long time, Katerina Nikolaevna, so long that I almost considered it impossible ever to be sitting beside you as I am now, looking into your face and listening to your voice . . . For two years we haven’t seen each other, for two years we haven’t talked. I didn’t think I’d ever be talking to you. Well, so be it, what’s past is past, and what there is now will vanish tomorrow like smoke—so be it! I accept, because once again there’s no alternative, but don’t just go away now for nothing,” he suddenly added almost beseechingly, “since you’ve done me the charity of coming, don’t go away for nothing: answer me one question!”
“What question?”
“You and I will never see each other again and—what is it to you? Tell me the truth once and for all, to the one question intelligent people never ask: did you ever love me, or was I . . . mistaken?”
She blushed.
“I did love you,” she said.
I was just waiting for her to say that—oh, the truthful one, oh, the sincere one, oh, the honest one!
“And now?” he continued.
“Now I don’t.”
“And you laugh?”
“No, I just smiled inadvertently, because I knew you’d ask, ‘And now?’ And I smiled because . . . because when you guess something, you always smile . . .”
It was even strange. I had never yet seen her so wary, even almost timid, and so abashed. He was devouring her with his eyes.
“I know you don’t love me . . . and—you don’t love me at all?”
“Maybe I don’t love you at all. I don’t love you,” she added firmly, not smiling now and not blushing. “Yes, I did love you, but not for long. I very soon stopped loving you then . . .”
“I know, I know, you saw it wasn’t what you wanted, but . . . what do you want? Explain it to me once more . . .”
“Did I already explain it to you sometime? What I want? But I’m a most ordinary woman; I’m a calm woman, I like . . . I like merry people.”