LITMIR.BIZ

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you did it, but I was glad that you were ready to be punished for me! I thought, ‘She is crying now, but how I love her! Tomorrow how I will kiss her, how I will kiss her!’ And I wasn’t sorry, I really wasn’t sorry for you, though I did cry.”

      “But I didn’t cry, I was glad!”

      “You didn’t cry? Ah, you wicked girl!” cried Katya, fastening her little lips upon me.

      “Katya, Katya! Oh, dear! how lovely you are!”

      “Yes, am I not? Well, now you can do what you like to me. My tyrant, pinch me. Please pinch me l My darling, pinch me!”

      “You silly!”

      “Well, what next?”

      “Idiot!”

      “And what next?”

      “Why, kiss me.”

      And we kissed each other, cried, laughed, and our lips were swollen with kissing.

      “Netochka! To begin with, you are always to sleep with me. Are you fond of kissing? And we will kiss each other. Then I won’t have you be so depressed. Why were you so depressed? You’ll tell me, won’t you?”

      “I will tell you everything, but I am not sad now, but happy!”

      “No, you are to have rosy cheeks like mine. Oh, if tomorrow would only come quickly! Are you sleepy, Netochka?”

      “No.”

      “Well, then let’s talk.”

      And we chattered away for another two hours. Goodness knows what we didn’t talk about. To begin with, the little princess unfolded all her plans for the future, and explained the present position of affairs; and so I learned that she loved her father more than anyone, almost more than me. Then we both decided that Madame Leotard was a splendid woman, and that she was not at all strict. Then we settled what we would do the next day, and the day after, and, in fact, planned out our lives for the next twenty years. Katya decided that we should live in this way: one day she would give me orders and I should obey, and the next day it should be the other way round, I should command and she would obey unquestioningly, and so we should both give orders equally; and that if either disobeyed on purpose we would first quarrel just for appearances and then make haste to be reconciled. In short, an infinity of happiness lay before us. At last we were tired out with prattling, I could not keep my eyes open. Katya laughed at me and called me sleepy-head, but she fell asleep before I did. In the morning we woke up at the same moment, hurriedly kissed because someone was coming in, and I only just had time to scurry into my bed.

      All day we did not know what to do for joy. We were continually hiding and running away from everyone, dreading other people’s eyes more than anything. At last I began telling her my story. Katya was distressed to tears by what I told her.

      “You wicked, wicked girl! Why didn’t you tell me all this before? I should have loved you so. And did the boys in the street hurt you when they hit you?”

      “Yes, I was so afraid of them.”

      “Oh, the wretches! Do you know, Netochka, I saw a boy beating another in the street. Tomorrow I’ll steal Falstaff’s whip, and if I meet one like that, I’ll give him such a beating!”

      Her eyes were flashing with indignation.

      We were frightened when anyone came in. We were afraid of being caught kissing each other. And we kissed each other that day at least a hundred times. So that day passed and the next. I was afraid that I should die of rapture, I was breathless with joy. But our happiness did not last long.

      Madame Leotard had to report all the little princess’s doings. She watched us for three days, and during those three days she gathered a great deal to relate. At last she went down to Katya’s mother and told her all that she had observed—that we both seemed in a sort of frenzy; that for the last three days we had been inseparable; that we were continually kissing, crying and laughing like lunatics, and that like lunatics we babbled incessantly; that there had been nothing like this before, that she did not know to what to attribute it, but she fancied that the little princess was passing through some nervous crisis; and finally that she believed that it would be better for us to see each other more seldom.

      “I have thought so for a long time,” answered the princess. “I knew that queer little orphan would give us trouble. The things I have been told about her, about her life in the past! Awful, really awful! She has an unmistakable influence over Katya. You say that Katya is very fond of her?”

      “Absolutely devoted.”

      The princess crimsoned with annoyance. She was already jealous of her daughter’s feeling for me.

      “It’s not natural,” she said. “At first they seemed to avoid each other, and I must confess I was glad of it. Though she is only a little girl, I would not answer for anything. You understand me? She has absorbed her bringing up, her habits and perhaps principles from infancy, and I don’t understand what the prince sees in her. A thousand times I have suggested sending her to a boarding-school.”

      Madame Leotard attempted to defend me, but the princess had already determined to separate us. Katya was sent for at once, and on arriving downstairs was informed that she would not see me again till the following Sunday—that is, for just a week.

      I learned all this late in the evening and was horror-stricken; I thought of Katya, and it seemed to me that she would not be able to bear our separation. I was frantic with misery and grief and was taken ill in the night; in the morning the prince came to see me and whispered to me words of hope. The prince did his utmost, but all was in vain, the princess would not alter her intention. Little by little I was reduced to despair, I could hardly breathe for misery.

      On the morning of the third day Nastya brought me a note from Katya. Katya wrote a fearful scrawl in pencil:

      “I love you. I am sitting with mamma and thinking all the time how I can escape to you. But I shall escape, I have said so, and so I don’t cry. Write and tell me how you love me. And I was hugging you in my dreams all night, and was very miserable, Netochka. I am sending you some sweets. Farewell.”

      I answered in the same style. I spent the day crying over Katya’s letter. Madame Leotard worried me with her caresses. In the evening she went to the prince and told him I should certainly be ill for the third time if I did not see Katya, and that she regretted having told the princess. I questioned Nastya about Katya. She told me that Katya was not crying but was very pale.

      In the morning Nastya whispered to me:

      “Go down to his Excellency’s study. Go down by the staircase on the right.”

      My whole being revived with a presentiment. Breathless with expectation, I ran down and opened the study door. She was not there. Suddenly Katya clutched me from behind and kissed me warmly. Laughter, tears.... In a flash Katya tore herself from my arms, clambered on her father, leapt on his shoulders like a squirrel, but losing her balance, sprang off on to the sofa. The prince fell on the sofa after her. Katya was shedding tears of joy.

      “Father, what a good man you are!”

      “You madcaps! What has happened to you? What’s this friendship? What’s this love?”

      “Be quiet, father, you know nothing about it.”

      And we rushed into each other’s arms again.

      I began looking at her more closely. She had grown thinner in three days. The red had begun to fade from her little face, and pallor was stealing into its place. I shed tears of grief.

      At last Nastya knocked, a signal that Katya had been missed and was being asked for. Katya turned deathly pale.

      “That’s enough, children. We’ll meet every day. Good-bye, and may God bless you,” said the prince.

      He was touched as he looked at us; but his words did not come true. In the evening the news came from Moscow that little Sasha had fallen ill and was

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