lighted.
'No, never mind. I am not cold,' she said, smiling listlessly. 'I only feel weak. Do you know, I fancy I have grown much wiser lately. I have extraordinary, original ideas now. When I think of my past, of my life then ... people in general, in fact, it is all summed up for me in the image of my stepmother. Coarse, insolent, soulless, false, depraved, and a morphia maniac too. My father, who was feeble and weak-willed, married my mother for her money and drove her into consumption; but his second wife, my stepmother, he loved passionately, insanely.... What I had to put up with! But what is the use of talking! And so, as I say, it is all summed up in her image.... And it vexes me that my stepmother is dead. I should like to meet her now!'
'Why?'
'I don't know,' she answered with a laugh and a graceful movement of her head. 'Good-night. You must get well. As soon as you are well, we'll take up our work ... It's time to begin.'
After I had said good-night and had my hand on the door-handle, she said:
'What do you think? Is Polya still living there?'
'Probably.'
And I went off to my room. So we spent a whole month. One grey morning when we both stood at my window, looking at the clouds which were moving up from the sea, and at the darkening canal, expecting every minute that it would pour with rain, and when a thick, narrow streak of rain covered the sea as though with a muslin veil, we both felt suddenly dreary. The same day we both set off for Florence.
XVI
It was autumn, at Nice. One morning when I went into her room she was sitting on a low chair, bent together and huddled up, with her legs crossed and her face hidden in her hands. She was weeping bitterly, with sobs, and her long, unbrushed hair fell on her knees. The impression of the exquisite marvellous sea which I had only just seen and of which I wanted to tell her, left me all at once, and my heart ached.
'What is it?' I asked; she took one hand from her face and motioned me to go away. 'What is it?' I repeated, and for the first time during our acquaintance I kissed her hand.
'No, it's nothing, nothing,' she said quickly. 'Oh, it's nothing, nothing.... Go away.... You see, I am not dressed.'
I went out overwhelmed. The calm and serene mood in which I had been for so long was poisoned by compassion. I had a passionate longing to fall at her feet, to entreat her not to weep in solitude, but to share her grief with me, and the monotonous murmur of the sea already sounded a gloomy prophecy in my ears, and I foresaw fresh tears, fresh troubles, and fresh losses in the future. 'What is she crying about? What is it?' I wondered, recalling her face and her agonised look. I remembered she was with child. She tried to conceal her condition from other people, and also from herself. At home she went about in a loose wrapper or in a blouse with extremely full folds over the bosom, and when she went out anywhere she laced herself in so tightly that on two occasions she fainted when we were out. She never spoke to me of her condition, and when I hinted that it might be as well to see a doctor, she flushed crimson and said not a word.
When I went to see her next time she was already dressed and had her hair done.
'There, there,' I said, seeing that she was ready to cry again. 'We had better go to the sea and have a talk.'
'I can't talk. Forgive me, I am in the mood now when one wants to be alone. And, if you please, Vladimir Ivanitch, another time you want to come into my room, be so good as to give a knock at the door.'
That 'be so good' had a peculiar, unfeminine sound. I went away. My accursed Petersburg mood came back, and all my dreams were crushed and crumpled up like leaves by the heat. I felt I was alone again and there was no nearness between us. I was no more to her than that cobweb to that palm-tree, which hangs on it by chance and which will be torn off and carried away by the wind. I walked about the square where the band was playing, went into the Casino; there I looked at overdressed and heavily perfumed women, and every one of them glanced at me as though she would say: 'You are alone; that's all right.' Then I went out on the terrace and looked for a long time at the sea. There was not one sail on the horizon. On the left bank, in the lilac-coloured mist, there were mountains, gardens, towers, and houses, the sun was sparkling over it all, but it was all alien, indifferent, an incomprehensible tangle.
XVII
She used as before to come into my room in the morning to coffee, but we no longer dined together, as she said she was not hungry; and she lived only on coffee, tea, and various trifles such as oranges and caramels.
And we no longer had conversations in the evening. I don't know why it was like this. Ever since the day when I had found her in tears she had treated me somehow lightly, at times casually, even ironically, and for some reason called me 'My good sir.' What had before seemed to her terrible, heroic, marvellous, and had stirred her envy and enthusiasm, did not touch her now at all, and usually after listening to me, she stretched and said:
'Yes, 'great things were done in days of yore,' my good sir.'
It sometimes happened even that I did not see her for days together. I would knock timidly and guiltily at her door and get no answer; I would knock again—still silence.... I would stand near the door and listen; then the chambermaid would pass and say coldly, '
Then I go out into the corridor again, listen in a tremor.... I have no dinner; I don't notice the approach of evening. At last about eleven I hear the familiar footstep, and at the turn near the stairs Zinaida Fyodorovna comes into sight.
'Are you taking a walk?' she would ask as she passes me. 'You had better go out into the air.... Good- night!'
'But shall we not meet again to-day?'
'I think it's late. But as you like.'
'Tell me, where have you been?' I would ask, following her into the room.
'Where? To Monte Carlo.' She took ten gold coins out of her pocket and said: 'Look, my good sir; I have won. That's at roulette.'
'Nonsense! As though you would gamble.'
'Why not? I am going again to-morrow.'
I imagined her with a sick and morbid face, in her condition, tightly laced, standing near the gaming-table in a crowd of cocottes, of old women in their dotage who swarm round the gold like flies round the honey. I remembered she had gone off to Monte Carlo for some reason in secret from me.
'I don't believe you,' I said one day. 'You wouldn't go there.'
'Don't agitate yourself. I can't lose much.'
'It's not the question of what you lose,' I said with annoyance. 'Has it never occurred to you while you were playing there that the glitter of gold, all these women, young and old, the croupiers, all the surroundings—that it is all a vile, loathsome mockery at the toiler's labour, at his bloody sweat?
'If one doesn't play, what is one to do here?' she asked. 'The toiler's labour and his bloody sweat—all that eloquence you can put off till another time; but now, since you have begun, let me go on. Let me ask you bluntly, what is there for me to do here, and what am I to do?'
'What are you to do?' I said, shrugging my shoulders. 'That's a question that can't be answered straight off.'
'I beg you to answer me honestly, Vladimir Ivanitch,' she said, and her face looked angry. 'Once I have brought myself to ask you this question, I am not going to listen to stock phrases. I am asking you,' she went on,
