What am I to do? Gruzin told me to go into a nunnery. Oh, I would! I would change my dress, my face, my name, my thoughts . . . everything -- everything, and would hide myself for ever. But they will not take me into a nunnery. I am with child.'
'We will go abroad together to-morrow,' I said.
'That's impossible. My husband won't give me a passport.'
'I will take you without a passport.'
The cabman stopped at a wooden house of two storeys, painted a dark colour. I rang. Taking from me her small light basket -- the only luggage we had brought with us -- Zinaida Fyodorovna gave a wry smile and said :
'These are my
But she was so weak that she could not carry these
It was a long while before the door was opened. After the third or fourth ring a light gleamed in the windows, and there was a sound of steps, coughing and whispering; at last the key grated in the lock, and a stout peasant woman with a frightened red face appeared at the door. Some distance behind her stood a thin little old woman with short grey hair, carrying a candle in her hand. Zinaida Fyodorovna ran into the passage and flung her arms round the old woman's neck.
'Nina, I've been deceived,' she sobbed loudly. 'I've been coarsely, foully deceived! Nina, Nina!'
I handed the basket to the peasant woman. The door was closed, but still I heard her sobs and the cry 'Nina!'
I got into the cab and told the man to drive slowly to the Nevsky Prospect. I had to think of a night's lodging for myself.
Next day towards evening I went to see Zinaida Fyodorovna. She was terribly changed. There were no traces of tears on her pale, terribly sunken face, and her expression was different. I don't know whether it was that I saw her now in different surroundings, far from luxurious, and that our relations were by now different, or perhaps that intense grief had already set its mark upon her; she did not strike me as so elegant and well dressed as before. Her figure seemed smaller; there was an abruptness and excessive nervousness about her as though she were in a hurry, and there was not the same softness even in her smile. I was dressed in an expensive suit which I had bought during the day. She looked first of all at that suit and at the hat in my hand, then turned an impatient, searching glance upon my face as though studying it.
'Your transformation still seems to me a sort of miracle,' she said. 'Forgive me for looking at you with such curiosity. You are an extraordinary man, you know.'
I told her again who I was, and why I was living at Orlov's, and I told her at greater length and in more detail than the day before. She listened with great attention, and said without letting me finish:
'Everything there is over for me. You know, I could not refrain from writing a letter. Here is the answer.'
On the sheet which she gave there was written in Orlov's hand:
'I am not going to justify myself. But you must own that it was your mistake, not mine. I wish you happiness, and beg you to make haste and forget.
Yours sincerely,
'G. O.
'P. S. -- I am sending on your things.'
The trunks and baskets despatched by Orlov were standing in the passage, and my poor little portmanteau was there beside them.
'So . . .' Zinaida Fyodorovna began, but she did not finish.
We were silent. She took the note and held it for a couple of minutes before her eyes, and during that time her face wore the same haughty, contemptuous, proud, and harsh expression as the day before at the beginning of our explanation; tears came into her eyes -- not timid, bitter tears, but proud, angry tears.
'Listen,' she said, getting up abruptly and moving away to the window that I might not see her face. 'I have made up my mind to go abroad with you tomorrow.'
'I am very glad. I am ready to go to-day.'
'Accept me as a recruit. Have you read Balzac?' she asked suddenly, turning round. 'Have you? At the end of his novel 'Pere Goriot' the hero looks down upon Paris from the top of a hill and threatens the town: 'Now we shall settle our account,' and after this he begins a new life. So when I look out of the train window at Petersburg for the last time, I shall say, 'Now we shall settle our account!' '
Saying this, she smiled at her jest, and for some reason shuddered all over.
XV
At Venice I had an attack of pleurisy. Probably I had caught cold in the evening when we were rowing from the station to the Hotel Bauer. I had to take to my bed and stay there for a fortnight. Every morning while I was ill Zinaida Fyodorovna came from her room to drink coffee with me, and afterwards read aloud to me French and Russian books, of which we had bought a number at Vienna. These books were either long, long familiar to me or else had no interest for me, but I had the sound of a sweet, kind voice beside me, so that the meaning of all of them was summed up for me in the one thing -- I was not alone. She would go out for a walk, come back in her light grey dress, her light straw hat, gay, warmed by the spring sun; and sitting by my bed, bending low down over me, would tell me something about Venice or read me those books -- and I was happy.
At night I was cold, ill, and dreary, but by day I revelled in life -- I can find no better expression for it. The brilliant warm sunshine beating in at the open windows and at the door upon the balcony, the shouts below, the splash of oars, the tinkle of bells, the prolonged boom of the cannon at midday, and the feeling of perfect, perfect freedom, did wonders with me; I felt as though I were growing strong, broad wings which were bearing me God knows whither. And what charm, what joy at times at the thought that another life was so close to mine! that I was the servant, the guardian, the friend, the indispensable fellow-traveller of a creature, young, beautiful, wealthy,
