way you people in high society know how to manage the truth? I’m crude and stupid, I’d have believed you at once, I’d have believed anything you said! It wouldn’t have cost you anything to do that, would it? You’re not really afraid of me! How could you have humiliated yourself so willingly before an upstart, before a pathetic adolescent?”
“In this at least I haven’t humiliated myself before you,” she uttered with extreme dignity, evidently not understanding my exclamation.
“Oh, on the contrary, on the contrary! That’s just what I’m shouting! . . .”
“Ah, it was so bad and so thoughtless on my part!” she exclaimed, raising her hand to her face and as if trying to cover herself with it. “I was already ashamed yesterday, that’s why I was so out of sorts when you were sitting with me . . . The whole truth is,” she added, “that my circumstances have now come together in such a way that I absolutely needed, finally, to know the whole truth about the fate of that unfortunate letter, otherwise I had already begun to forget about it . . . because I didn’t receive you only on account of that,” she added suddenly.
My heart trembled.
“Of course not,” she smiled with a subtle smile, “of course not! I . . . You remarked on it very aptly earlier, Arkady Makarovich, that you and I often talked as student to student. I assure you that I’m sometimes very bored with people; it has become especially so after the trip abroad and all those family misfortunes . . . I even go out very little now, and not only from laziness. I often want to leave for the country. I could reread my favorite books there, which I set aside long ago, otherwise I can’t find time to read them. Remember, you laughed that I read Russian newspapers, two newspapers a day?”
“I didn’t laugh . . .”
“Of course, because it stirred you in the same way, but I confessed to you long ago: I’m Russian, and I love Russia. You remember, we kept reading the ‘facts,’ as you called them” (she smiled). “Though very often you’re somehow . . . strange, yet you sometimes became so animated that you were always able to say an apt word, and you were interested in precisely what interested me. When you’re a ‘student,’ you really are sweet and original. But other roles seem little suited to you,” she added with a lovely, sly smile. “You remember, we sometimes spent whole hours talking about nothing but figures, counting and estimating, concerned about the number of schools we have and where education is headed. We counted up the murders and criminal cases, made comparisons with the good news . . . wanted to know where it was all going and what, finally, would happen with us ourselves. I met with sincerity in you. In society they never talk with us women like that. Last week I tried to talk with Prince ——v about Bismarck, because it interested me very much, but I couldn’t make up my own mind, and, imagine, he sat down beside me and began telling me, even in great detail, but all of it with some sort of irony, and precisely with that condescension I find so unbearable, with which ‘great men’ usually speak to us women when we meddle in what is ‘not our business’ . . . And do you remember how you and I nearly quarreled over Bismarck? You were proving to me that you had an idea of your own that went ‘way beyond’ Bismarck’s,” she suddenly laughed. “I’ve met only two people in my life who have talked quite seriously with me: my late husband, a very, very intelligent and . . . noble man,” she said imposingly, “and then—you yourself know who . . .”
“Versilov!” I cried. I held my breath at each word she said.
“Yes. I liked very much to listen to him, and in the end I became fully . . . perhaps overly candid with him, but it was then that he didn’t believe me!”
“Didn’t believe you!”
“Yes, but then nobody ever believed me.”
“But Versilov! Versilov!”
“It’s not simply that he didn’t believe me,” she said, lowering her eyes and smiling somehow strangely, “but he decided that I had ‘all vices’ in me.”
“Of which you don’t have a single one!”
“No, I do have some.”
“Versilov didn’t love you, that’s why he didn’t understand you,” I cried, flashing my eyes.
Something twitched in her face.
“Drop that and never speak to me of . . . that man . . .” she added hotly and with strong emphasis. “But enough; it’s time to go.” (She got up to leave.) “So, do you forgive me or not?” she said, looking at me brightly.
“Me . . . forgive . . . you! Listen, Katerina Nikolaevna, and don’t be angry! Is it true that you’re getting married?”
“That’s not at all decided yet,” she said, as if afraid of something, with embarrassment.
“Is he a good man? Forgive me, forgive me the question!”
“Yes, very good . . .”
“Don’t answer any more, don’t deign to answer me! I know that such questions are impossible from me! I only wanted to know whether he’s worthy or not, but I’ll find out about him myself.”
“Ah, listen!” she said in alarm.
“No, I won’t, I won’t. I’ll pass by . . . But I’ll only say this: may God grant you every happiness, every one that you choose . . . for having given me so much happiness now, in this one hour! You are now imprinted on my soul forever. I have acquired a treasure: the thought of your perfection. I suspected perfidy, coarse coquetry, and I was unhappy . . . because I couldn’t connect that notion with you . . . during these last days I’ve been thinking day and night; and suddenly it all becomes clear as day! Coming in here, I thought I’d go away with Jesuitism, cunning, a worming-out serpent, but I found honor, glory, a student! . . . You laugh? Go on, go on! But you’re a saint, you can’t laugh at what is sacred . . .”
“Oh, no, I’m only laughing that you use such terrible words . . . Well, what is a ‘worming-out serpent’?” she laughed.
“You let drop one precious word today,” I went on in rapture. “How could you possibly say in front of me ‘that you were counting on my ardor’? Well, so you’re a saint and confess even to that, because you imagined some sort of guilt in yourself and wanted to punish yourself . . . Though, incidentally, there wasn’t any guilt, because even if there was, everything that comes from you is holy! But still you might not have said precisely that word, that expression! . . . Such even unnatural candor only shows your lofty chastity, your respect for me, your faith in me,” I
