afterwards, and that you might be forced to marry me.”
“Aglaia Ivanovna! Aren’t you ashamed? How could such a nasty idea arise in your pure, innocent heart? I’d swear that you don’t believe one word of it … and you don’t know what you’re saying!”
Aglaia sat, looking doggedly at the ground, as though frightened herself at what she had said.
“I’m not ashamed at all,” she muttered. “How do you know that my heart is so innocent? How dared you send me a love-letter, that time?”
“A love-letter? My letter — a love-letter! That letter was most respectful; that letter was the outpouring of my heart at the bitterest moment of my life! I thought of you then as of some light… I…”
“Oh, very well, very well,” she interrupted suddenly, in a quite different, completely penitent and almost frightened tone. She turned to him, though still trying to avoid looking at him, and seemed on the point of touching his shoulder, to beg him more persuasively not to be angry with her.
“It’s all right,” she added, terribly shamefaced. “I feel I used a very stupid expression. I said that just.. . to test vou. Take it as thouqh it were unsaid. If I
offended you, forgive me. Don’t look straight at me, please. Turn away. You said that was a very nasty idea. I said it on purpose to vex you. Sometimes I’m afraid of what I’m going to say myself, then all at once I say it. \bu said just now that you wrote that letter at the most painful moment of your life. I know what moment it was,” she said softly, looking at the ground again.
“Oh, if you could know everything!”
“I do know everything!” she cried, with renewed excitement. “\bu’d been living for a whole month in the same flat with that horrid woman with whom you ran away….”
She did not turn red this time, but turned pale as she uttered the words, and she stood up as though she did not know what she was doing, but recollecting herself, sat down again; for a long time her lip was still quivering. The silence lasted a minute. Myshkin was greatly taken aback by the suddenness of her outburst, and did not know how to account for it.
“I don’t love you at all,” she said suddenly, as though rapping out the phrase.
Myshkin made no answer; again they were silent for a minute.
“I love Gavril Ardalionovitch . . ,” she said, speaking hurriedly, but scarcely audibly, bending her head still lower.
“That’s not true,” answered Myshkin, also almost whispering.
“Then I’m lying? That’s true. I gave him my word the day before yesterday, on this very seat.”
Myshkin was frightened, and pondered a minute.
“That’s not true,” he repeated, with decision. “You’ve invented all that.”
“You’re wonderfully polite. Let me tell you he’s reformed. He loves me more than his life. He burnt his hand before my eyes to show me that he loved me more than his life.”
“Burnt his hand?”
“Yes, his hand. “Vbu may believe it or not — I don’t care.”
Myshkin was silent again. There was no trace of jesting in Aglaia’s words. She was angry.
“Why, did he bring a candle with him, if he did it here? I don’t see how else he could …”
“Yes … he did. What is there unlikelyabout it?”
“A whole one, in a candlestick?”
“Oh, well . . . no . . . half a candle … a candle-end … a whole one. It doesn’t matter. Let me alone! He brought matches, too, if you like. He lighted the candle, and he left his finger in it for half an hour. Is there anything impossible in that?”
“I saw him yesterday. His fingers were all right.”
Aglaia suddenly went off into a peal of laughter, like a child.
“Do you know why I told you that fib, just now?” She suddenly turned to Myshkin with childlike confidence, and the laugh still quivering on her lips. “Because, when you are lying, if you skilfully put in something not quite ordinary, something eccentric, something, you know, that never has happened, or very rarely, it makes the lie sound much more probable. I’ve noticed that. It didn’t answer with me because I didn’t do it properly…”
Suddenly she frowned again, as though recollecting herself.
“When,” she turned to Myshkin, looking seriously and even mournfully at him, “when I read you about the ‘poor knight,’ though I did mean to applaud you for one thing, yet I wanted also to put you to shame for your behaviour, and to show you I knew all about it.”
“You are very unjust to me … to that unhappy woman of whom you spoke so horribly just now, Aglaia.”
“It’s because I know all about it, all about it. That’s why I spoke like that! I know that six months ago you offered her your hand in the presence of every one. Don’t interrupt me. “Vbu see, I speak without comment. After that she ran away with Rogozhin; then you lived with her in some country place or in the town, and she went away from you to some one else (Aglaia blushed painfully); then she went back again to Rogozhin who loves her like … like a madman. Then you, a very clever person, too . . . galloped after her here, as soon as you heard she had gone back to Petersburg. Yesterday evening you rushed to defend her, and just now you were dreaming about her. . . . You see, I know all about it; it was for her sake, for her sake you came here, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, for her sake,” Myshkin answered softly, looking down mournfully and dreamily, not suspecting with what burninq eves Aqlaia qlared at him.
“For her sake, to find out. … I don’t believe in her being happy with Rogozhin though. … In short, I don’t know what I could do for her here, or how I could help her, but I came.”
He started and looked at Aglaia; she was listening to him with a look of hatred.
“If you came, not knowing why, then you love her very much,” she brought out at last.
“No,” answered Myshkin, “no, I don’t love her. Oh, if you only knew with what horror I recall the time I spent with her!”
A shudder ran down him, as he uttered the words.
“Tell me all,” said Aglaia.
“There is nothing in it you might not hear about. Why I wanted to tell you all about it, and only you, I don’t know. Perhaps because I really did love you very much. That unhappy woman is firmly convinced that she is the most fallen, the most vicious creature in the whole world. Oh, don’t cry shame on her, don’t throw stones at her! She has tortured herself too much from the consciousness of her undeserved shame! And, my God, she’s not to blame! Oh, she’s crying out every minute in her frenzy that she doesn’t admit going wrong, that she was the victim of others, the victim of a depraved and wicked man. But whatever she may say to you, believe me, she’s the first to disbelieve it, and to believe with her whole conscience that she is … to blame. When I tried to dispel that gloomy delusion, it threw her into such misery that my heart will always ache when I remember that awful time. It’s as though my heart had been stabbed once for all. She ran away from me. Do you know what for? Simply to show me that she was a degraded creature. But the most awful thing is that perhaps she didn’t even know herself that she only wanted to prove that to me, but ran away because she had an irresistible inner craving to do something shameful, so as to say to herself at once, There, you’ve done something shameful again, so you’re a degraded creature!’ Oh, perhaps you won’t understand this, Aglaia. Do you know that in that continual consciousness of shame there is perhaps a sort of awful, unnatural enjoyment for her, a sort of revenge on some one. Sometimes I did bring her to seeing light round her once more, as it were. But she would grow restive again at once, and even came to accusing me bitterly of setting myself up above her (though I had no thought of such a thing) and told me in so many words at last, when I offered her marriage, that she didn’t want condescending sympathy or help from anyone, nor to be elevated to anyone’s level. \bu saw her yesterday. Do you think she’s happy with that set, that they are fitting company for her? \bu don’t know how well educated she is, and what she can understand! She really surprised me sometimes.”
“Did you ever then preach her such . . . sermons?”
“Oh, no,” Myshkin went on dreamily, not observing the tone and the question. “I hardly ever spoke. I often wanted to speak, but I really didn’t know sometimes what to say. You know, in some cases it is better not to speak at all. Oh, I loved her; oh, I loved her very much, but afterwards .. . afterwards .. . afterwards she guessed it all.”
“What did she guess?”
“That I only pitied her, but that I . . . don’t love her any more.”
“How do you know? Perhaps she really fell in love with that… landowner she went away with?”
“No, I know all about it. She was only laughing at him.”
“And did she never laugh at you?”
“N-no. She used to laugh in anger. Oh, then she would reproach me horribly, in a fury — and she was