away. I stood up in the boat, and in the dumb agony of desire stretched out my arms to the sea…. Oh! how my heart ached at that moment! How bitter was my loneliness to me! With what rapture would I have abandoned myself utterly then, utterly … utterly, if there had been any one to abandon myself to! With what a bitter emotion in my soul I flung myself down in the bottom of the boat and, like Repetilov, asked to be taken anywhere, anywhere away! But my friend here has experienced nothing like that. And why should he? He has managed things far more wisely than I. He is living … while I … He may well call me a philosopher…. Strange! they call you a philosopher too…. What has brought this calamity on both of us?
I am not living…. But who is to blame for that? Why am I staying on here, in Petersburg? what am I doing here? why am I wearing away day after day? why don't I go into the country? What is amiss with our steppes? has not one free breathing space in them? is one cramped in them? A strange craze to pursue dreams, when happiness is perhaps within reach! Resolved! I am going, going to-morrow, if I can. I am going home—that is, to you,—it's just the same; we're only twenty versts from one another. Why, after all, grow stale here! And how was it this idea did not strike me sooner? Dear Marya Alexadrovna, we shall soon see each other. It's extraordinary, though, that this idea never entered my head before! I ought to have gone long, long ago. Good-bye till we meet, Marya Alexandrovna.
I purposely gave myself twenty-four hours for reflection, and am now absolutely convinced that I have no reason to stay here. The dust in the streets is so penetrating that my eyes are bad. To-day I am beginning to pack, the day after to-morrow I shall most likely start, and within ten days I shall have the pleasure of seeing you. I trust you will welcome me as in old days. By the way, your sister is still staying at your aunt's, isn't she?
Marya Alexandrovna, let me press your hand warmly, and say from my heart, Good-bye till we meet. I had been getting ready to go away, but that letter has hastened my project. Supposing the letter proves nothing, supposing even Ninetta would not please any one else, me for instance, still I am going; that's decided now. Till we meet, yours,
A. S.
XIII
FROM MARYA ALEXANDROVNA TO ALEXEY PETROVITCH
VILLAGE OF X——-,
You are coming here, Alexey Petrovitch, you will soon be with us, eh? I will not conceal from you that this news both rejoices and disturbs me…. How shall we meet? Will the spiritual tie persist which, as it seems to me, has sprung up between us? Will it not be broken by our meeting? I don't know; I feel somehow afraid. I will not answer your last letter, though I could say much; I am putting it all off till our meeting. My mother is very much pleased at your coming…. She knew I was corresponding with you. The weather is delicious; we will go a great many walks, and I will show you some new places I have discovered…. I especially like one long, narrow valley; it lies between hillsides covered with forest…. It seems to be hiding in their windings. A little brook courses through it, scarcely seeming to move through the thick grass and flowers…. You shall see. Come: perhaps you will not be bored.
M.B.
XIV
FROM MARYA ALEXANDROVNA TO ALEXEY PETROVITCH
VILLAGE OF X——,
I have written to you several times, Alexey Petrovitch … you have not answered. Are you living? Or perhaps you are tired of our correspondence; perhaps you have found yourself some diversion more agreeable than what can be afforded for you by the letters of a provincial young lady. You remembered me, it is easy to see, simply from want of anything better to do. If that's so, I wish you all happiness. If you do not even now answer me, I will not trouble you further. It only remains for me to regret my indiscretion in having allowed myself to be agitated for nothing, in having held out a hand to a friend, and having come for one minute out of my lonely corner. I must remain in it for ever, must lock myself up—that is my apportioned lot, the lot of all old maids. I ought to accustom myself to this idea. It's useless to come out into the light of day, needless to wish for fresh air, when the lungs cannot bear it. By the way, we are now hemmed in all round by deadly drifts of snow. For the future I will be wiser…. People don't die of dreariness; but of misery, perhaps, one might perish. If I am wrong, prove it to me. But I fancy I am not wrong. In any case, good-bye. I wish you all happiness.
M. B.
XV
FROM ALEXEY PETROVITCH TO MARYA ALEXANDROVNA
DRESDEN,
I am writing to you, my dear Marya Alexandrovna, and I am writing only because I do not want to die without saying good-bye to you, without recalling myself to your memory. I am given up by the doctors … and I feel myself that my life is ebbing away. On my table stands a rose: before it withers, I shall be no more. This comparison is not, however, altogether an apt one. A rose is far more interesting than I.
I am, as you see, abroad. It is now six months since I have been in Dresden. I received your last letters—I am ashamed to confess—more than a year ago. I lost some of them and never answered them…. I will tell you directly why. But it seems you were always dear to me; to no one but you have I any wish to say good-bye, and perhaps I have no one else to take leave of.
Soon after my last letter to you (I was on the very point of going down to your neighbourhood, and had made various plans in advance) an incident occurred which had, one may truly say, a great influence on my fate, so great an influence that here I am dying, thanks to that incident. I went to the theatre to see a ballet. I never cared for ballets; and for every sort of actress, singer, and dancer I had always had a secret feeling of repulsion…. But it is clear there's no changing one's fate, and no one knows himself, and one cannot foresee the future. In reality, in life it's only the unexpected that happens, and we do nothing in a whole lifetime but accommodate ourselves to facts…. But I seem to be rambling off into philosophising again. An old habit! In brief, I fell in love with a dancing-girl.
This was the more curious as one could not even call her a beauty. It is true she had marvellous hair of ashen gold colour, and great clear eyes, with a dreamy, and at the same time daring, look in them…. Could I fail to know the expression of those eyes? For a whole year I was pining and swooning in the light—of them! She was splendidly well-made, and when she danced her national dance the audience would stamp and shout with delight…. But, I fancy, no one but I fell in love with her,—at least, no one was in love with her as I was. From the very minute when I saw her for the first time (would you believe it, I have only to close my eyes, and at once the theatre is before me, the almost empty stage, representing the heart of a forest, and she running in from the wing on the right, with a wreath of vine on her head and a tiger-skin over her shoulders)—from that fatal moment I have belonged to her utterly, just as a dog belongs to its master; and if, now that I am dying, I do not belong to her, it is only because she has cast me off.
To tell the truth, she never troubled herself particularly about me. She scarcely noticed me, though she was very good-natured in making use of my money. I was for her, as she expressed it in her broken French, 'oun Rousso, boun enfant,' and nothing more. But I … I could not live where she was not living; I tore myself away once for all from everything dear to me, from my country even, and followed that woman.
You will suppose, perhaps, that she had brains. Not in the least! One had only to glance at her low brow, one
