“No, I don’t find it ridiculous,” he replied terribly seriously. “How can you not feel your father’s blood in you? . . . True, you’re still young, because . . . I don’t know . . . it seems someone who is not of age cannot fight a duel, and his challenge cannot be accepted . . . according to the rules . . . But, if you like, there can be only one serious objection here: if you make a challenge without the knowledge of the offended person, for whose offense you are making the challenge, you are thereby expressing, as it were, a certain lack of respect for him on your own part, isn’t that true?”
Our conversation was suddenly interrupted by a footman, who came to announce something. Seeing him, the prince, who seemed to have been expecting him, stood up without finishing what he was saying and quickly went over to him, so that the footman made his announcement in a low voice, and I, of course, didn’t hear what it was.
“Excuse me,” the prince turned to me, “I’ll be back in a minute.”
And he went out. I was left alone; I paced the room and thought. Strangely, I both liked him and terribly disliked him. There was something in him that I could not name myself, but something repellent. “If he’s not laughing at me a bit, then without doubt he’s terribly straightforward, but if he was laughing at me . . . then maybe he’d seem more intelligent . . .” I thought somehow strangely. I went over to the table and read Versilov’s letter once more. I was so absorbed that I even forgot about the time, and when I came to my senses, I suddenly noticed that the prince’s little minute had indisputably lasted a whole quarter of an hour already. That began to trouble me a little; I paced up and down once more, finally took my hat and, I remember, decided to step out so as to meet someone, to send for the prince, and, when he came, to take leave of him at once, assuring him that I had things to do and could not wait any longer. It seemed to me that this would be most proper, because I was slightly pained by the thought that, in leaving me for so long, he was treating me negligently.
The two closed doors to this room were at two ends of the same wall. Having forgotten which door we came in by, or, rather, out of absentmindedness, I opened one of them and suddenly saw, sitting on a sofa in a long and narrow room—my sister Liza. There was no one there except her, and she was, of course, waiting for someone. But before I had time even to be surprised, I suddenly heard the voice of the prince, talking loudly to someone and going back to his study. I quickly closed the door, and the prince, coming in through the other door, noticed nothing. I remember he started apologizing and said something about some Anna Fyodorovna . . . But I was so confused and astounded that I made out almost none of it, and only muttered that I had to go home, and then insistently and quickly left. The well-bred prince, of course, must have looked at my manners with curiosity. He saw me off to the front hall and kept talking, but I did not reply and did not look at him.
IV
GOING OUTSIDE, I turned left and started walking at random. Nothing added up in my head. I walked slowly and, it seems, had gone quite far, some five hundred steps, when I suddenly felt a light tap on my shoulder. I turned and saw Liza: she had caught up with me and tapped me lightly with her umbrella. There was something terribly gay and a bit sly in her shining eyes.
“Well, how glad I am that you went this way, otherwise I wouldn’t have met you today!” She was slightly breathless from walking quickly.
“How breathless you are.”
“I ran terribly to catch up with you.”
“Liza, was it you I just met?”
“Where?”
“At the prince’s . . . Prince Sokolsky’s . . .”
“No, not me, you didn’t meet me . . .”
I said nothing, and we walked on some ten paces. Liza burst into loud laughter:
“Me, me, of course it was me! Listen, you saw me yourself, you looked into my eyes, and I looked into your eyes, so how can you ask whether you met me? Well, what a character! And you know, I wanted terribly to laugh when you stared into my eyes there, it was terribly funny the way you stared.”
She laughed terribly. I felt all the anguish leave my heart at once.
“But, tell me, how did you wind up there?”
“I was at Anna Fyodorovna’s.”
“What Anna Fyodorovna?”
“Stolbeev. When we lived in Luga, I sat with her for whole days; she received mama at her place and even called on us. And she called on almost nobody there. She’s a distant relation of Andrei Petrovich’s and a relation of the Princes Sokolsky; she’s some sort of grandmother to the prince.”
“So she lives with the prince?”
“No, the prince lives with her.”
“So whose apartment is it?”
“It’s her apartment, the apartment has been all hers for a whole year now. The prince has just arrived and is staying with her. And she herself has only been four days in Petersburg.”
“ Well . . . you know what, Liza, God be with the apartment, and the woman herself . . .”
“No, she’s wonderful . . .”
“Let her be, and in spades. We’re wonderful ourselves! Look, what a day, look, how good! How beautiful you are today, Liza. However, you’re a terrible child.”
“Arkady, tell me, that girl, the one yesterday.”
“Ah, what a pity, Liza, what a pity!”
“Ah, what a pity! What a fate! You know, it’s even sinful that you and I go along so merrily, and her soul is now flying somewhere in the darkness, in some bottomless darkness, sinner that she is, and offended . . . Arkady, who’s to blame for her sin? Ah, how frightful it is! Do you ever think about that darkness? Ah, how afraid I am of death, and how sinful that is! I don’t like the dark, I much prefer this sun! Mama says it’s sinful to be afraid . . . Arkady, do you know mama well?”
“Little so far, Liza, I know her very little.”
“Ah, what a being she is; you must, must get to know her! She has to be understood in a special way . . .”
“But see, I didn’t know you either, and now I know the whole of you. I came to know the whole of you in one minute. Though you’re afraid of death, Liza, it must be that you’re proud, bold, courageous. Better than I, much better than I! I love you terribly, Liza! Ah, Liza! Let death come when it must, and meanwhile—live, live! We’ll pity that unfortunate girl, but even so we’ll bless life, right? Right? I have an ‘idea,’ Liza. Liza, do you know that Versilov renounced the inheritance?”
“How could I not know! Mama and I already kissed each other.”
“You don’t know my soul, Liza, you don’t know what this man has meant for me . . .”
“Well, how could I not know, I know everything.”
“You know everything? Well, what else! You’re intelligent; you’re more intelligent than Vasin. You and mama—you have penetrating, humane eyes, that is, looks, not eyes, I’m wrong . . . I’m bad in many ways, Liza.”
“You need to be taken in hand, that’s all.”
“Take me, Liza. How nice it is to look at you today. Do you know that you’re very pretty? I’ve never seen your eyes before . . . Only now I’ve seen them for the first time . . . Where did you get them today, Liza? Where did you buy them? How much did you pay? Liza, I’ve never had a friend, and I look upon the idea as nonsense; but with you it’s not nonsense . . . If you want, let’s be friends! You understand what I want to say? . . .”
“I understand very well.”
“And you know, without any conditions, any contract—we’ll simply be friends!”
“Yes, simply, simply, only with one condition: if we ever accuse each other, if we’re displeased with something, if we ourselves become wicked, bad, if we even forget all this—let’s never forget this day and this very hour! Let’s promise ourselves. Let’s promise that we will always remember this day, when we walked hand in hand, and laughed so, and were so merry . . . Yes? Yes?”
“Yes, Liza, yes, and I swear it; but, Liza, it’s as if I’m hearing you for the first time . . . Liza, have you read a lot?”
“He never asked till now! Only yesterday, when I made a slip in speaking, he deigned to pay attention for the first time, my dear sir, Mister Wise Man.”
“But why didn’t you start talking to me yourself, since I was such a fool?”
“I kept waiting for you to become smarter. I saw through you from the very beginning, Arkady Makarovich, and once I saw through you, I began to think like this: ‘He’ll come, he’ll surely end up by coming’—well, and I supposed it was better to leave that honor to you, so that it was you
