it you were dreaming about?”
“It was … you’ve seen her.”
“I understand. I quite understand. “Vbu think a lot. .. . How did you dream of her? What was she doing? Though I don’t care to know,” she snapped out, with an airof vexation. “Don’t interrupt me….”
She waited a little, as though to pluck up her courage or to overcome her vexation.
“I’ll tell you what I asked you to come for; I want to make a proposition that you should be my friend. Why are you staring at me all of a sudden?” she asked, almost wrathfully.
Myshkin certainly was watching her very intently at that moment, observing that she had begun to flush hotly again. In such cases, the more she blushed, the more angry she seemed with herself, and it was unmistakably apparent in her flashing eyes. Usually she transferred her anger to the person she was talking to, whether he were to blame or not, and would begin quarrelling with him. Being aware of her own awkwardness and desperate shyness and very conscious of it, she was, as a rule, not very ready to enter into conversation, and was more silent than her sisters, sometimes too silent, indeed. When, particularly in such delicate cases, she was positively obliged to speak, she would begin the conversation with marked haughtiness and with a sort of defiance. She always felt beforehand when she was beginning or about to begin to blush.
“Perhaps you don’t care to accept my proposition?” She looked haughtily at Myshkin.
“Oh, yes, I should like to. Only it was quite unnecessary.. .. That is, I shouldn’t have thought you need make such a proposition,” said Myshkin in confusion.
“What did you think then? What do you suppose I asked you to come here for? What’s in your mind? But perhaps you look on me as a little fool, as they all do at home?”
“I didn’t know that they look on you as a fool. I… I don’t look on you so.”
“You don’t look on me so? Very clever on your part. Particularly cleverly expressed.”
“I think you may be quite clever at times,” Myshkin went on. “You said somethinq very clever just now.
\bu were speaking of my uncertainty about Ippolit. There’s nothing but truth in it, and so it’s unjust.’ I shall remember that and think it over.”
Aglaia suddenly crimsoned with pleasure. All such transitions of feeling were artlessly apparent in her, and followed one another with extraordinary rapidity. Myshkin, too, was delighted, and positively laughed with pleasure, watching her.
“Listen,” she began again. “I’ve been waiting for a long time to tell you all about it. I’ve been wanting to, ever since you wrote me that letter, and even before then…. You heard half of it yesterday. I consider you the most honest and truthful of men, more honest and truthful than anyone; and if they do say that your mind . . . that is, that you’re sometimes afflicted in your mind, it’s unjust. I made up my mind about that, and disputed with others, because, though you really are mentally afflicted (you won’t be angry at that, of course; I’m speaking from a higher point of view), yet the mind that matters is better in you than in any of them. It’s something, in fact, they have never dreamed of. For there are two sorts of mind: one that matters, and one that doesn’t matter. Is that so? That is so, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps it is,” Myshkin articulated faintly. His heart was trembling and throbbing violently.
“I was sure you would understand,” she went on impressively. “Prince S. and “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch don’t understand about those two sorts of mind, nor Alexandra either, but, only fancy, maman understood.”
“You’re very like Lizaveta Prokofeyvna.”
“How so? Really?” Aglaia asked, surprised.
“Yes, really.”
“Thank you,” she said, after a moment’s thought. “I am very glad I’m like maman. “Vbu have a great respect for her, then?” she added, quite unconscious of the naivete of the question.
“Very great. And I’m glad you saw it so directly.”
“And I’m glad, because I’ve noticed that people sometimes . . . laugh at her. But let me tell you what matters most. I’ve been thinking a long time, and at last I’ve picked you out. I don’t want them to laugh at me at home. I don’t want them to look on me as a little fool. I don’t want them to tease me…. I realized it all at once, and refused Yevgeny Pavlovitch point-
blank, because I don’t want to be continually being married! I want… I want. . . Well, I want to run away from home, and I’ve chosen you to help me.”
“Run away from home!” cried Myshkin.
“Yes, yes, yes! Run away from home,” she cried, at once flaring up with extraordinary anger. “I can’t bear, I can’t bear their continually making me blush there. I don’t want to blush before them, or before Prince S. or before Yevgeny Pavlovitch, or before anyone, and so I’ve chosen you. To you I want to tell everything, everything, even the most important thing, when I want to, and you must hide nothing from me on your side. I want, with one person at least, to speak freely of everything, as I can to myself. They suddenly began saying that I was waiting for you, and that I loved you. That began before you came here, though I didn’t show them the letter. And now they’re all talking about it. I want to be bold, and not to be afraid of anything. I don’t want to go to their balls. I want to be of use. I’ve been wanting to get away for a long time. For twenty years I’ve been bottled up at home, and they keep trying to marry me. I’ve been thinking of running away since I was fourteen, though I was a silly. Now I’ve worked it all out, and was waiting for you to ask you all about foreign countries. I have never seen a Gothic cathedral. I want to go to Rome. I want to visit all the learned societies. I want to study in Paris. I was preparing myself and studying all last year, and I’ve read a great many books. I have read all the forbidden books. Alexandra and Adelaida read any books — they’re allowed to. But I am not allowed to read all of them; they supervise me. I don’t want to quarrel with my sisters, but I told my father and mother long ago that I want to make a complete change in my social position. I propose to take up teaching, and I’ve been reckoning on you because you said you were fond of children. Couldn’t we go in for education together, not at once perhaps, but in the future? We should be doing good together. I don’t want to be a general’s daughter. Tell me, are you a very learned person?”
“Oh, not at all.”
“That’s a pity, for I thought. . . how was it I thought so? “Vbu’ll be my guide all the same because I have chosen you.”
“That’s absurd, Aglaia Ivanovna.”
“I want to run away from home — I want to,” she cried, and again her eyes flashed. “If you won’t consent, I shall marry Gavril Ardalionovitch. I don’t want to be looked upon as a horrid girl at home, and be accused of goodness knows what.”
“Are you mad!” cried Myshkin, almost leaping up from his seat. “What are you accused of? Who accuses you?”
“Every one at home. Mother, my sisters, father, Prince S. even your horrid Kolya. If they don’t say so straight out, they think so. I told them all so to their faces, mother and father too. Maman was ill for a whole day afterwards. And next day Alexandra and papa told me that I didn’t understand what nonsense I was talking and what words I was speaking. And I told them straight out that I understood everything; all sorts of words; that I’m not a little girl; that I read two novels of Paul de Kock two years ago, so as to find out everything. Maman almost fainted when she heard me.”
A strange idea suddenly occurred to Myshkin. He looked intently at Aglaia and smiled.
He could scarcely believe that the haughty girl who had once so proudly and disdainfully read him Gavril Ardalionovitch’s letter was actually sitting before him. He could not conceive that the disdainful, stern beauty could turn out to be such a baby, a baby, who perhaps did not even nowunderstand some words.
“Have you always lived at home, Aglaia Ivanovna?” he asked. “I mean, did you never go to school or study at an institute?”
“I’ve never been anywhere. I’ve always sat at home, as though I were corked up in a bottle, and I’m to be married straight out of the bottle. Why are you laughing again? I notice that you, too, seem to be laughing at me, and taking their part,” she added, frowning menacingly. “Don’t make me angry. I don’t know what’s the matter with me as it is. I’m certain you came here fully persuaded that I am in love with you, and was making a tryst with you,” she snapped out irritably.
“I certainly was afraid of that yesterday,” Myshkin blurted out with simplicity. (He was very much confused.) “But lam convinced to-day that you …”
“What?” cried Aglaia, and her lower lip began trembling. “You were afraid that I . . . You dared to imagine that I . . . Good heavens! You suspected perhaps that I invited you here to ensnare you, so that we might be found here