And, finally, she might simply have wanted to visit Tatyana Pavlovna and told me yesterday without any purpose, and I imagined all sorts of things. And it had been said so much in passing, carelessly, calmly, and after a rather boring séance, because all the while I had been at her place yesterday, I had been thrown off for some reason: I sat, mumbled, and didn’t know what to say, grew terribly angry and timid, and she was going out somewhere, as it turned out afterwards, and was visibly glad when I got up to leave. All these considerations crowded in my head. I decided, finally, that I would go, ring the bell, the cook would open the door, and I would ask, “Is Tatyana Pavlovna at home?” If she wasn’t, it meant “rendezvous.” But I had no doubts, no doubts!
I ran up the stairs and—on the stairs, in front of the door, all my fear vanished. “Well, come what may,” I thought, “only quickly!” The cook opened the door and, with her vile phlegm, grumbled that Tatyana Pavlovna was not at home. “And is there anyone else waiting for Tatyana Pavlovna?” I was about to ask, but didn’t. “Better see for myself,” and, muttering to the cook that I would wait, I threw off my coat and opened the door . . .
Katerina Nikolaevna was sitting by the window and “waiting for Tatyana Pavlovna.”
“She’s not here?” she suddenly asked me, as if with worry and vexation, the moment she saw me. Both her voice and her face corresponded so little with my expectations that I simply got mired on the threshold.
“Who’s not here?” I murmured.
“Tatyana Pavlovna! Didn’t I ask you yesterday to tell her I’d call on her at three o’clock?”
“I . . . I haven’t seen her at all.”
“You forgot?”
I sat down as if crushed. So that’s how it turned out! And, above all, everything was as clear as two times two, and I—I still stubbornly believed.
“I don’t even remember your asking me to tell her. And you didn’t; you simply said you’d be here at three o’clock,” I cut her short impatiently. I wasn’t looking at her.
“Ah!” she suddenly cried. “So, if you forgot to tell her, and yet knew yourself that I would be here, so then what did you come here for?”
I raised my head. There was neither mockery nor wrath in her face, there was only her bright, cheerful smile and some sort of additional mischievousness in her expression—her perpetual expression, however—an almost childlike mischievousness. “There, you see, I’ve caught you out. Well, what are you going to say now?” her whole face all but said.
I didn’t want to answer, and again looked down. The silence lasted for about half a minute.
“Are you just coming from papà?” she suddenly asked.
“I’m just coming from Anna Andreevna, and I wasn’t at Prince Nikolai Ivanovich’s at all . . . and you knew that,” I suddenly added.
“Did anything happen to you at Anna Andreevna’s?”
“That is, since I now have such a crazy look? No, I had a crazy look even before Anna Andreevna’s.”
“And you didn’t get smarter at her place?”
“No, I didn’t. Besides, I heard there that you were going to marry Baron Bjoring.”
“Did she tell you that?” she suddenly became interested.
“No, I told her that, and I heard Nashchokin say it to Prince Sergei Petrovich today when he came to visit.”
I still wouldn’t raise my eyes to her; to look at her meant to be showered with light, joy, happiness, and I didn’t want to be happy. The sting of indignation pierced my heart, and in a single instant I made a tremendous decision. Then I suddenly began to speak, I scarcely remember what about. I was breathless and mumbled somehow, but now I looked boldly at her.
My heart was pounding. I began talking about something totally unrelated, though maybe it made sense. At first she listened with her steady, patient smile, which never left her face, but, little by little, astonishment and then even alarm flashed in her intent gaze. Her smile still didn’t leave her, but the smile, too, as if trembled at times.
“What’s the matter?” I suddenly asked, noticing that she was all atremble.
“I’m afraid of you,” she replied almost anxiously.
“Why don’t you leave? Look, since Tatyana Pavlovna isn’t here now, and you knew she wouldn’t be, doesn’t that mean you should get up and leave?”
“I wanted to wait, but now . . . in fact . . .”
She made as if to rise.
“No, no, sit down,” I stopped her. “There, you just trembled again, but you smile even when you’re afraid . . . You always have a smile. There, now you’re smiling completely . . .”
“Are you raving?”
“Yes.”
“I’m afraid . . .” she whispered again.
“Of what?”
“That you’ll . . . start breaking down the walls . . .” She smiled again, but this time indeed timidly.
“I can’t bear your smile! . . .”
And I started talking again. It was just as if I was flying. As if something was pushing me. I had never, never talked with her like that, but always timidly. I was terribly timid now, too, but I went on talking; I remember I began talking about her face.
“I can’t bear your smile anymore!” I suddenly cried. “Why did I imagine you as menacing, magnificent, and with sarcastic society phrases while I was in Moscow? Yes, in Moscow; I talked about you with Marya Ivanovna while I was still there, and we imagined you, how you must be . . . Do you remember Marya Ivanovna? You visited her. As I was coming here, I dreamed of you all night on the train. Before you arrived, I spent a whole month here looking at your portrait in your father’s study, and guessed nothing. The expression of your face is childlike mischievousness and infinite simpleheartedness—there! I’ve marveled at that terribly all the while I’ve been coming to see you. Oh, you know how to look proud and crush one with your gaze. I remember how you looked at me at your father’s when you came from Moscow then . . . I saw you then, and yet if I had been asked then, when I left, what you were like—I wouldn’t have been able to tell. I couldn’t even have said how tall you were. I saw you and just went blind. Your portrait doesn’t resemble you at all: your eyes aren’t dark, but light, and only seem dark because of your long lashes. You’re plump, of average height, but your plumpness is firm, light, the plumpness of a healthy young village girl. And you have a perfect village face, the face of a village beauty—don’t be offended, it’s good, it’s better—a round, ruddy, bright, bold, laughing, and . . . shy face! Really, it’s shy. The shy face of Katerina Nikolaevna Akhmakov! Shy and chaste, I swear! More than chaste —childlike!—that’s your face! I’ve been struck all this while, and all this while I’ve asked myself: is this that woman? I know now that you’re very intelligent, but in the beginning I thought you were a bit simple. Your mind is gay, but without any embellishments . . . Another thing I like is that the smile never leaves you; that’s my paradise! I also like your calmness, your quietness, and that you articulate your words smoothly, calmly, and almost lazily—I precisely like that laziness. It seems that if a bridge collapsed under you, even then you’d say something smooth and measured . . . I imagined you as the height of pride and passion, yet you’ve talked with me these two whole months like student to student . . . I never imagined your forehead was like that: it’s slightly low, as in statues, but it’s white and delicate as marble under your fluffy hair. You have a high bosom, a light step, you’re of extraordinary beauty, yet you have no pride at all. I’ve come to believe it only now, I didn’t believe it before!”
She listened wide-eyed to this whole wild tirade; she saw that I was trembling myself. She raised her gloved little hand several times in a sweet, cautious gesture, so as to stop me, but each time withdrew it in perplexity and fear. Now and then she even recoiled quickly with her whole body. Two or three times a smile glimmered again on her face; one time she blushed very much, but in the end she was decidedly frightened and began to turn pale. As soon as I paused, she reached out her hand and said in a sort of pleading but still smooth voice:
“You cannot speak like that . . . it’s impossible to speak like that . . .”
And she suddenly got up from her place, unhurriedly taking her scarf and sable muff.
“You’re going?” I cried.
“I’m decidedly afraid of you . .
