“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.”
“Merry?”
“You see, I don’t even know how to speak with you. It seems to me that if you could love me less, then I could come to love you,” she again smiled timidly. The fullest sincerity flashed in her reply, and could she possibly not have understood that her reply was the most definitive formula of their relations, which explained and resolved everything? Oh, how he must have understood that! But he looked at her and smiled strangely.
“Is Bjoring merry?” he went on asking.
“Oh, he shouldn’t trouble you at all,” she answered with a certain haste. “I’m marrying him only because with him it will be calmest for me. My soul will remain entirely my own.”
“They say you’ve again come to like society, the world?”
“Not society. I know that in our society there’s the same disorder as everywhere; but the external forms are still beautiful, so that if one lives only so as to pass by, it’s better here than anywhere else.”
“I’ve begun hearing the word ‘disorder’ quite often. Were you also frightened then by my disorder, the chains, the ideas, the stupidities?”
“No, it wasn’t quite that . . .”
“Then what was it? For God’s sake, say it all straight out.”
“Well, I’ll tell you straight out, because I consider you of the greatest intelligence . . . I always thought there was something ridiculous in you.”
Having said that, she suddenly blushed, as if realizing that she had done something extremely imprudent.
“I can forgive you a great deal for telling me that,” he said strangely.
“I didn’t finish,” she hurried on, turning more red. “It’s I who am ridiculous . . . for talking to you like a fool.”
“No, you’re not ridiculous, you’re merely a depraved society woman!” He turned terribly pale. “I also didn’t finish earlier, when I asked you why you came. Would you like me to finish? There exists a certain letter, a document, and you are terribly afraid of it, because your father, with that letter in his hands, might curse you while he lives and legally deprive you of your inheritance in his will. You are afraid of that letter, and you have come for that letter,” he spoke nearly trembling all over, and his teeth even almost chattering. She listened to him with a wistful and pained expression on her face.
“I know that you can cause me considerable unpleasantness,” she said, as if warding off his words, “but I’ve come not so much to persuade you not to persecute me, as to see you yourself. I’ve even wished very much to meet you for a long time now, I myself . . . But I find you the same as you were before,” she suddenly added, as if carried away by a particular and decisive thought and even by some strange and sudden feeling.
“And you hoped to see me different? This—after that letter of mine about your depravity? Tell me, did you come here without any fear?”
“I came because I once loved you; but, you know, I beg you, please, don’t threaten me with anything while we’re together now, don’t remind me of my bad thoughts and feelings. If you could talk to me about something else, I’d be very glad. Let there be threats afterwards, but something different now . . . I truly came to see and hear you for a moment. Well, but if you can’t, then kill me straight out, only don’t threaten me and don’t torture yourself before me,” she concluded, looking at him in strange expectation, as if she really supposed he might kill her. He got up from his chair again and, looking at her with an ardent gaze, said firmly:
“You will leave here without the slightest offense.”
“Ah, yes, your word of honor!” she smiled.
“No, not only because I gave my word of honor in the letter, but because I want to and shall think about you all night . . .”
“To torment yourself ?”
“I always imagine you when I’m alone. All I do is talk to you. I go into slums and dens and, as a contrast, you appear before me at once. But you always laugh at me, as now . . .” he said as if beside himself.
“Never, never have I laughed at you!” she exclaimed in a deeply moved voice and as if with the greatest compassion showing on her face. “If I came, I tried as hard as I could to do it so as not to hurt you in any way,” she suddenly added. “I came here to tell you that I almost love you . . . Forgive me, I may not have said it right,” she added hastily.
He laughed.
“What makes you unable to pretend? What makes you such a simpleton, what makes you unlike everyone else . . . Well, how can you say to a man you’re driving away, ‘I almost love you’?”
“I just didn’t know how to put it,” she hurried on, “I didn’t say it right; it’s because I’ve always been abashed in your presence and have never known how to speak, ever since our first meeting. And if I used the wrong words when I said I ‘almost love you,’ in my thought it was almost so—that’s why I said it, though I love you with that . . . well, that generallove with which one loves everyone and which there’s no shame in confessing . . .”
He listened silently, not taking his ardent gaze off her.
“I, of course, offend you,” he went on as if beside himself. “This must indeed be what they call passion . . . I know one thing, that with you I’m finished; without you also. It’s all the same with you or without you, wherever you are, you’re always with me. I also know that I can hate you very much, more than I love you . . . However, I’ve long ceased thinking of anything—it’s all the same to me. I’m only sorry that I love a woman like you . . .”
His voice faltered; he went on as if breathless:
“What’s the matter? You find what I’m saying wild?” He smiled a pale smile. “I think that, if only it would attract you, I could stand on one leg on a pillar somewhere for thirty years . . . I see you pity me, your face says, ‘I’d love you if I could, but I can’t . . .’ Yes? Never mind, I have no pride. I’m ready, like a beggar, to take any charity from you—any . . . do you hear? . . . What pride can a beggar have?”
She got up and went over to him.
“My friend!” she said, touching his shoulder with her hand and with inexpressible feeling in her face. “I cannot listen to such words! I’ll think of you all my life as of the most precious of men, as of the greatest of hearts, as of something sacred out of all that I can respect and love. Andrei Petrovich, understand my words: there’s something I came for now, dear man, dear before and now! I’ll never forget how you shook my mind during our first meetings. Let’s part as friends, and you will be my most serious and most dear thought in all my life!”