LITMIR.BIZ

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will not forsake them when I am dead, Nyetochka? Will you?” she said in a whisper, as though afraid someone might overhear us.

      “Hush, you are killing me!” was all I could say to her in answer.

      “I was joking,” she said with a smile, after a brief pause. “And you believed me. You know, I talk all sorts of nonsense sometimes. I am like a child now, you must forgive me everything.”

      Then she looked at me timidly, as though afraid to say something. I waited.

      “Mind you don’t alarm him,” she said at last, dropping her eyes, with a faint flush in her cheeks, and in so low a voice that I could hardly catch her words.

      “Whom?” I asked, with surprise.

      “My husband. You might perhaps tell him what I have said.”

      “What for, what for?” I repeated, more and more surprised.

      “Well, perhaps you wouldn’t tell him, how can I say!” she answered, trying to glance shyly at me, though the same simplehearted smile was shining on her lips, and the colour was mounting more and more into her face. “Enough of that; I am still joking, you know.”

      My heart ached more and more.

      “Only you will love them when I am dead, won’t you?” she added gravely, and again, as it seemed, with a mysterious air. “You will love them as if they were your own. Won’t you? Remember, I always looked on you as my own, and made no difference between you and the children.”

      “Yes, yes,” I answered, not knowing what I was saying, and breathless with tears and confusion.

      A hot kiss scalded my hand before I had time to snatch it away. I was tongue-tied with amazement.

      What is the matter with her? What is she thinking? What happened between them yesterday? was the thought that floated through my mind.

      A minute later she began to complain of being tired.

      “I have been ill a long time, but I did not want to frighten you two. You both love me — don’t you…? Goodbye for now, Nyetochka; leave me, but be sure to come in the evening. You will, won’t you?”

      I promised to; but I was glad to get away, I could not have borne any more.

      “Poor darling, poor darling! What suspicion are you taking with you to the grave?” I exclaimed to myself, sobbing. “What new trouble is poisoning and gnawing your heart, though you scarcely dare to breathe a word of it? My God! This long suffering which I understand now through and through, this life without a ray of sunshine, this timid love that asks for nothing! And even now, now, almost on her deathbed, when her heart is torn in two with pain, she is afraid, like a criminal, to utter the faintest murmur, the slightest complaint — and imagining, inventing a new sorrow, she has already submitted to it, is already resigned to it…”

      Towards the evening, in the twilight, I took advantage of the absence of Ovrov (the man who had come from Moscow) to go into the library and, unlocking a bookcase, began rummaging among the bookshelves to choose something to read aloud to Alexandra Mihalovna. I wanted to distract her mind from gloomy thoughts, and to choose something gay and light… I was a long time, absentmindedly choosing. It got darker, and my depression grew with the darkness. I found in my hands the same book again, with the page turned down on which even now I saw the imprint of the letter, which had never left my bosom since that day — the secret with which my existence seemed, as it were, to have been broken and to have begun anew, and with which so much that was cold, unknown, mysterious, forbidding and now so ominously menacing in the distance had come upon me… What will happen to me? I wondered: the corner in which I had been so snug and comfortable would be empty. The pure clean spirit which had guarded my youth would leave me. What was before me? I was standing in a reverie over my past, now so dear to my heart, as it were striving to gaze into the future, into the unknown that menaced me… I recall that minute as though I were living it again; it cut so sharply into my memory.

      I was holding the letter and the open book in my hands, my face was wet with tears. All at once I started with dismay; I heard the sound of a familiar voice. At the same time I felt that the letter was torn out of my hands. I shrieked and looked round; Pyotr Alexandrovitch was standing before me. He seized me by the arm and held me firmly; with his right hand he raised the letter to the light and tried to decipher the first lines… I cried out, and would have faced death rather than leave the letter in his hands. From his triumphant smile I saw that he had succeeded in making out the first lines. I lost my head…

      A moment later I had dashed at him, hardly knowing what I was doing, and snatched the letter from him. All this happened so quickly that I had not time to realise how I had got the letter again. But seeing that he meant to snatch it out of my hand again, I made haste to thrust it into my bosom and step back three or four paces.

      For half a minute we stared at each other in silence. I was still trembling with terror, pale. With quivering lips that turned blue with rage, he broke the silence.

      “That’s enough!” he said in a voice weak with excitement. “You surely don’t wish me to use force; give me back the letter of your own accord.”

      Only now I realised what had happened and I was breathless with resentment, shame, and indignation at this coarse brutality. Hot tears rolled down my burning cheeks. I was shaking all over with excitement, and was for some time incapable of uttering a word.

      “Did you hear?” he said, advancing two paces towards me.

      “Leave me alone, leave me alone!” I cried, moving away from him. “Your behaviour is low, ungentlemanly. You are forgetting yourself! Let me go!…”

      “What? What’s the meaning of this? And you dare to take up that tone to me… after what you’ve… Give it me, I tell you!”

      He took another step towards me, but glancing at me saw such determination in my eyes that he stopped, as though hesitating.

      “Very good!” he said dryly at last, as though he had reached a decision, though he could still scarcely control himself. “That will do later, but first…”

      Here he looked round him.

      “You… Who let you into the library? How is it that this bookcase is open? Where did you get the key?”

      “I am not going to answer you,” I said. “I can’t talk to you. Let me go, let me go.”

      I went towards the door.

      “Excuse me,” he said, holding me by the arm. “You are not going away like that.”

      I tore my arm away from him without a word, and again made a movement towards the door.

      “Very well. But I really cannot allow you to receive letters from your lovers in my house….”

      I cried out with horror, and looked at him frantically….

      “And so…”

      “Stop!” I cried. “How can you? How could you say it to me? My God! My God!…”

      “What? What? Are you threatening me too?”

      But as I gazed at him, I was pale and overwhelmed with despair. The scene between us had reached a degree of exasperation I could not understand. My eyes besought him not to prolong it. I was ready to forgive the outrage if only he would stop. He looked at me intently, and visibly hesitated.

      “Don’t drive me to extremes,” I whispered in horror.

      “No, I must get to the bottom of it,” he said at last, as though considering. “I must confess the look in your eyes almost made me hesitate,” he added with a strange smile. “But unluckily, the fact speaks for itself. I succeeded in reading the first words of your letter. It’s a love letter. You won’t persuade me it isn’t! No, dismiss that idea from your mind! And that I could doubt it for a moment only proves that I must add to your excellent qualities your abilities as an expert liar, and therefore I repeat…”

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