“And how he loved me! how he loved me! Akh! what a delight it was! No one can imagine it, except the one who has experienced it. You know that, Viéra Pavlovna!
“You know, Viéra Pavlovna, that the look of even a woman makes me blush; our girls will tell you how bashful I am. It is for that reason that I live in a separate room; and how strange it is, you would scarcely believe it. But you know all about it, and I need not tell you. But when you think about it, you cannot part from this thought. No; I am going to leave you, Viéra Pavlovna; there is nothing more for me to tell you. I only wanted to tell you how good Sáshenka is.”
XV
Nástenka finished telling her story to Viéra Pavlovna on other days. She lived at Kirsánof’s house about two years. The signs of her threatening sickness seemed entirely to have disappeared; but at the end of the second year, when spring came, consumption suddenly appeared in its full development. The doctor thought that if she went away, she might count on staving off her death for a long while. They decided to part. To occupy her time in sedentary employment was also sure destruction. It was necessary for her to look for occupation as a housekeeper, chambermaid, nurse-girl, or something of the kind, and with such a mistress as would not impose trying duties upon her, and in such a way that there should not be unpleasantness, and this was a very important thing. These conditions were hard to meet; but such a place was found. Kirsánof had acquaintances among rising artists. Through them Nástenka found a place as chambermaid with one of the actresses in the Russian theatre, an excellent woman.
As long as the actress remained on the stage, Nástenka was well satisfied to live with her. The actress was a refined woman, and Nástenka valued her place; it would be hard to find another like it. Nástenka became attached to her because she never had any disagreeable scenes with her, and the actress seeing this, became kinder than ever. Nástenka lived a quiet life there, and her disease ceased, or almost ceased, to develop. But the actress got married, renounced the stage, and made her home in her husband’s family. And here, as Viéra Pavlovna had already heard before, the actress’s father-in-law began to affront the chambermaid. Nástenka, let us suppose, was not subjected to temptation, but it occasioned a family quarrel; the former actress began to put the old man to shame; the old man felt the shame. Nástenka did not want to be the cause of a family disorder, and even if she had wanted, she could not enjoy the peaceful life of her former situation, and she gave it up.
That was about two years and a half since her parting from Kirsánof. They had not seen each other at all during this time. He called upon her, but the happiness of the meeting affected her so unfavorably that he begged her not to let him call upon her for her own sake. Nástenka tried to live as chambermaid in two or three families, but everywhere she found so many worriments and unpleasantnesses, that it seemed better for her to become a seamstress, though it was a direct step towards the development of her disease; the disease would have been developed from any such trying position, and so it would be better for her to be subjected to such a fate, but without the unpleasantness, and only from her own work. A year of sewing entirely undermined Nástenka’s health. When she entered Viéra Pavlovna’s union, Lopukhóf, who was then the doctor for the shop, did everything possible to stop the development of the consumption; he did a great deal, that is, so far as a man with so little real knowledge of medicine can do. But the end was at hand.
Nástenka had enjoyed the delusion universal among those who suffer from consumption, imagining that her disease was not very far advanced, and so she did not seek to see Kirsánof; but for the last two months she had persistently asked Lopukhóf whether she had long to live. Why she wanted to know, she did not say, and Lopukhóf did not feel that he had
