“No, you must manage without rights; don’t aggravate the meanness of your supposition by stupidity. You are not lucky today. By the way, you surely can’t be afraid of public opinion and that you will be blamed for this ‘great happiness’? If that’s it, for God’s sake don’t alarm yourself. It’s not your doing at all and you are not responsible to anyone. When I opened your door yesterday, you didn’t even know who was coming in. It was simply my caprice, as you expressed it just now, and nothing more! You can look everyone in the face boldly and triumphantly!”
“Your words, that laugh, have been making me feel cold with horror for the last hour. That ‘happiness’ of which you speak frantically is worth … everything to me. How can I lose you now? I swear I loved you less yesterday. Why are you taking everything from me today? Do you know what it has cost me, this new hope? I’ve paid for it with life.”
“Your own life or another’s?”
He got up quickly.
“What does that mean?” he brought out, looking at her steadily.
“Have you paid for it with your life or with mine? is what I mean. Or have you lost all power of understanding?” cried Liza, flushing. “Why did you start up so suddenly? Why do you stare at me with such a look? You frighten me. What is it you are afraid of all the time? I noticed some time ago that you were afraid and you are now, this very minute … Good heavens, how pale you are!”
“If you know anything, Liza, I swear I don’t … and I wasn’t talking of that just now when I said that I had paid for it with life. …”
“I don’t understand you,” she brought out, faltering apprehensively.
At last a slow brooding smile came on to his lips. He slowly sat down, put his elbows on his knees, and covered his face with his hands.
“A bad dream and delirium. … We were talking of two different things.”
“I don’t know what you were talking about. … Do you mean to say you did not know yesterday that I should leave you today, did you know or not? Don’t tell a lie, did you or not?”
“I did,” he said softly.
“Well then, what would you have? You knew and yet you accepted ‘that moment’ for yourself. Aren’t we quits?”
“Tell me the whole truth,” he cried in intense distress. “When you opened my door yesterday, did you know yourself that it was only for one hour?”
She looked at him with hatred.
“Really, the most sensible person can ask most amazing questions. And why are you so uneasy? Can it be vanity that a woman should leave you first instead of your leaving her? Do you know, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, since I’ve been with you I’ve discovered that you are very generous to me, and it’s just that I can’t endure from you.”
He got up from his seat and took a few steps about the room.
“Very well, perhaps it was bound to end so. … But how can it all have happened?”
“That’s a question to worry about! Especially as you know the answer yourself perfectly well, and understand it better than anyone on earth, and were counting on it yourself. I am a young lady, my heart has been trained on the opera, that’s how it all began, that’s the solution.”
“No.”
“There is nothing in it to fret your vanity. It is all the absolute truth. It began with a fine moment which was too much for me to bear. The day before yesterday, when I ‘insulted’ you before everyone and you answered me so chivalrously, I went home and guessed at once that you were running away from me because you were married, and not from contempt for me which, as a fashionable young lady, I dreaded more than anything. I understood that it was for my sake, for me, mad as I was, that you ran away. You see how I appreciate your generosity. Then Pyotr Stepanovitch skipped up to me and explained it all to me at once. He revealed to me that you were dominated by a ‘great idea,’ before which he and I were as nothing, but yet that I was a stumbling-block in your path. He brought himself in, he insisted that we three should work together, and said the most fantastic things about a boat and about maple-wood oars out of some Russian song. I complimented him and told him he was a poet, which he swallowed as the real thing. And as apart from him I had known long before that I had not the strength to do anything for long, I made up my mind on the spot. Well, that’s all and quite enough, and please let us have no more explanations. We might quarrel. Don’t be afraid of anyone, I take it all on myself. I am horrid and capricious, I was fascinated by that operatic boat, I am a young lady … but you know I did think that you were dreadfully in love with me. Don’t despise the poor fool, and don’t laugh at the tear that dropped just now. I am awfully given to crying with self-pity. Come, that’s enough, that’s enough. I am no good for anything and you are no good for anything; it’s as bad for both of us, so let’s comfort ourselves with that. Anyway, it eases our vanity.”
“Dream and delirium,” cried Stavrogin, wringing his hands, and pacing about the room. “Liza, poor child, what have you done to yourself?”
“I’ve burnt myself in a candle, nothing more. Surely you are not crying, too? You should show less feeling and better breeding. …”
“Why, why did you come to me?”
“Don’t you understand what a ludicrous position you put yourself in in the eyes of the world by asking such questions?”
“Why have you ruined yourself, so grotesquely and so stupidly, and what’s to be done now?”
“And this is Stavrogin, ‘the
