Elena pushed back the hair that fell over on his forehead.
“O Dmitri! how glorious it will be for us two to set off together!”
“Yes,” said Insarov, “but there, when we get there—”
“Well?” put in Elena, “and won’t it be glorious to die together too? but no, why should we die? We will live, we are young. How old are you? Twenty-six?”
“Yes, twenty-six.”
“And I am twenty. There is plenty of time before us. Ah, you tried to run away from me? You did not want a Russian’s love, you Bulgarian! Let me see you trying to escape from me now! What would have become of us, if I hadn’t come to you then!”
“Elena, you know what forced me to go away.”
“I know; you were in love, and you were afraid. But surely you must have suspected that you were loved?”
“I swear on my honour, Elena, I didn’t.”
She gave him a quick unexpected kiss. “There, I love you for that too. And goodbye.”
“You can’t stop longer?” asked Insarov.
“No, dearest. Do you think it’s easy for me to get out alone? The quarter of an hour was over long ago.” She put on her cape and hat. “And you come to us tomorrow evening. No, the day after tomorrow. We shall be constrained and dreary, but we can’t help that; at least we shall see each other. Goodbye. Let me go.”
He embraced her for the last time. “Ah, take care, you have broken my watch-chain. Oh, what a clumsy boy! There, never mind. It’s all the better. I will go to Kuznetsky bridge, and leave it to be mended. If I am asked, I can say I have been to Kuznetsky bridge.” She held the door-handle. “By the way, I forgot to tell you, Monsieur Kurnatovsky will certainly make me an offer in a day or two. But the answer I shall make him—will be this—” She put the thumb of her left hand to the tip of her nose and flourished the other fingers in the air. “Goodbye till we see each other again. Now, I know the way … And don’t lose any time.”
Elena opened the door a little, listened, turned round to Insarov, nodded her head, and glided out of the room.
For a minute Insarov stood before the closed door, and he too listened. The door downstairs into the court slammed. He went up to the sofa, sat down, and covered his eyes with his hands. Never before had anything like this happened to him. “What have I done to deserve such love?” he thought. “Is it a dream?”
But the delicate scent of mignonette left by Elena in his poor dark little room told of her visit. And with it, it seemed that the air was still full of the notes of a young voice, and the sound of a light young tread, and the warmth and freshness of a young girlish body.
XXIV
Insarov decided to await more positive news, and began to make preparations for departure. The difficulty was a serious one. For him personally there were no obstacles. He had only to ask for a passport—but how would it be with Elena? To get her a passport in the legal way was impossible. Should he marry her secretly, and should they then go and present themselves to the parents? … “They would let us go then,” he thought. “But if they did not? We would go all the same. But suppose they were to make a complaint … if … No, better try to get a passport somehow.”
He decided to consult (of course mentioning no names) one of his acquaintances, an attorney, retired from practice, or perhaps struck off the rolls, an old and experienced hand at all sorts of clandestine business. This worthy person did not live near; Insarov was a whole hour in getting to him in a very sorry droshky, and, to make matters worse, he did not find him at home; and on his way back got soaked to the skin by a sudden downpour of rain. The next morning, in spite of a rather severe headache, Insarov set off a second time to call on the retired attorney. The retired attorney listened to him attentively, taking snuff from a snuffbox decorated with a picture of a full-bosomed nymph, and glancing stealthily at his visitor with his sly, and also snuff-coloured little eyes; he heard him to the end, and then demanded “greater definiteness in the statement of the facts of the case;” and observing that Insarov was unwilling to launch into particulars (it was against the grain that he had come to him at all) he confined himself to the advice to provide himself above all things with “the needful,” and asked him to come to him again, “when you have,” he added, sniffing at the snuff in the open snuffbox, “augmented your confidence and decreased your diffidence” (he talked with a broad accent). “A passport,” he added, as though to himself, “is a thing that can be arranged; you go a journey, for instance; who’s to tell whether you’re Marya Bredihin or Karolina Vogelmeier?” A feeling of nausea came over Insarov, but he thanked the attorney, and promised to come to him again in a day or two.
The same evening he went to the Stahovs. Anna Vassilyevna met him cordially, reproached him a little for having quite forgotten them, and, finding him pale, inquired especially after his health. Nikolai Artemyevitch did not say a single word to him; he only stared at him with elaborately careless curiosity; Shubin treated him coldly; but Elena astounded him. She was expecting him; she had put on for him the very dress she wore on the day of their first interview in the chapel; but she welcomed him so calmly, and was so polite and carelessly gay, that no one looking at her could have believed that this girl’s fate was already
