Demons

'You seem to be very offended with them, Marya Timofeevna?' 'Who, me? No,' she smiled simpleheartedly. 'Not a bit. I looked at you all then: you're all angry, you're all quarreling; you get together and can't even laugh from the heart. So much wealth and so little joy—it's all loathsome to me. But, anyway, I don't pity anyone now except my own self.'

'I've heard your life with your brother was bad without me?' 'Who told you so? Nonsense; it's much worse now; my dreams are not so good now, and they became not so good because you arrived. Why, tell me, please, did you appear, if I may ask?' 'And don't you want to go back to the convent?' 'Well, I could just feel they were going to offer me the convent again! As if I haven't seen your convent! And why should I go there, what will I bring with me? I'm as alone as can be now! It's too late for me to begin a third life.'

'You are very angry about something, perhaps you're afraid I've stopped loving you?'

'I don't care about you at all. I'm afraid I myself may well stop loving someone.'

She grinned contemptuously.

'I must be guilty before him in some very big way,' she added suddenly, as if to herself, 'only I don't know what I'm guilty of, that is my whole grief forever. Always, always, for all these five years I've feared day and night that I'm guilty before him for something. I've prayed sometimes, prayed and kept thinking about my great guilt before him. And so it's turned out to be true.'

'But what is it?'

'I'm only afraid there may be something on his part,' she went on without answering his question, not even hearing it at all. 'Again, he couldn't really become close with such paltry people. The countess would gladly eat me, even though she put me in her carriage. They're all in the conspiracy—is he, too? Has he, too, betrayed me?' (Her lips and chin began to tremble.) 'Listen, you: have you read about Grishka Otrepev, who was cursed at the seven councils?'^[102]

Nikolai Vsevolodovich did not answer.

'Anyway, I'll now turn and look at you,' she suddenly seemed to make up her mind. 'You also turn and look at me, only look more intently. I want to make sure for the last time.'

'I've been looking at you for a long time.'

'Hm,' said Marya Timofeevna, studying him closely, 'you've grown fatter ...'

She wanted to say something more, but then again, for the third time, the same fright instantly distorted her face, and she again recoiled, raising her hand in front of her.

'What's the matter with you?' Nikolai Vsevolodovich cried out, almost in rage.

But the fright lasted only an instant; her face twisted into some strange smile, suspicious, unpleasant.

'I beg you, Prince, to get up and come in,' she suddenly said, in a firm and insistent voice.

'How, come in? Come in where?'

'All these five years I've only been imagining how he would come in. Get up now and go out the door, into the other room. I'll sit here as if I'm not expecting anything and take a book in my hands, and suddenly you will come in after five years of traveling. I want to see how it will be.'

Nikolai Vsevolodovich gnashed his teeth to himself and growled something incomprehensible.

'Enough,' he said, slapping the table with his palm. 'I beg you to listen to me, Marya Timofeevna. Kindly collect all your attention, if you can. You're not completely mad, after all!' he burst out impatiently. 'Tomorrow I am announcing our marriage. You will never live in a mansion, don't deceive yourself. Would you like to live with me all your life, only very far from here? It's in the mountains, in Switzerland, there's a place there... Don't worry, I'll never abandon you or send you to the madhouse. I have enough money to live without begging. You'll have a maid; you won't do any work. Everything you want that's possible, you will be given. You will pray, go wherever you like, and do whatever you like. I won't touch you. I also won't stir from the place all my life. If you want, I won't speak to you all my life; if you want, you can tell me your stories every evening, as you did in those corners in Petersburg. I'll read books to you if you wish. But realize that it will be so all your life, in one place, and the place is a gloomy one. Do you want to? Are you resolved? You won't repent, you won't torment me with tears, curses?'

She heard him out with great curiosity, and thought silently for a long time.

'It's all incredible to me,' she said at last, mockingly and disgustedly. 'I might live like that for forty years in those mountains.' She laughed.

'Well, so we'll live there for forty years,' Nikolai Vsevolodovich scowled deeply.

'Hm. I won't go for anything.'

'Not even with me?'

'And what are you that I should go with you? To sit with him on a mountain for forty years on end—I see what he's up to! Really, what patient people we've got nowadays! No, it can't be that my falcon has turned into an owl. My prince is not like that!' She raised her head proudly and solemnly.

Something seemed to dawn on him.

'Why do you call me prince, and... whom do you take me for?' he asked quickly.

'What? You're not a prince?'

'And I never have been.'

'So you, you yourself, admit right to my face that you're not a prince?'

'I tell you, I never have been.'

'Lord!' she clasped her hands, 'I expected anything from his enemies, but such boldness—never! Is he alive?' she cried out in a frenzy, moving upon Nikolai Vsevolodovich. 'Have you killed him, or not? Confess!'