all that day, in an unknown and to you almost fantastic town, a day of scenes and meetings, a day of unexpected acquaintances, a day of the most surprising reality, of meeting the three Epanchin beauties, and Aglaia among them; then your fatigue and the turmoil in your head, and then the drawing-room of Nastasya Filippovna, and the tone of that drawing-room, and .. . what could you expect of yourself at such a moment, what do you think?”
“Yes, yes; yes, yes,” Myshkin shook his head, beginning to flush crimson. “Yes, that’s almost exactly how it was. And do you know I’d scarcely slept at all in the train the night before, and all the night before that, and was fearfully exhausted.”
“Yes, of course, that’s just what I am driving at,”
“Vfevgeny Pavlovitch went on warmly, “the fact’s clear that you, intoxicated with enthusiasm, so to speak, clutched at the opportunity of publicly proclaiming the generous idea, that you, a prince by birth and a man of pure life, did not regard a woman as dishonoured who had been put to shame, not through her own fault, but through the fault of a disgusting aristocratic profligate. Good heavens, of course one can understand it. But that’s not the point, dear prince, the point is whether there was reality, whether there was genuineness in your emotions, whether there was natural feeling or only intellectual enthusiasm. What do you think; in the temple the woman was forgiven — just such a woman, but she wasn’t told that she’d done well, that she was deserving of all respect and honour, was she? Didn’t common sense tell you within three months the true state of the case? But, even granting that she’s innocent now — I won’t insist on that for I don’t want to — but could all her adventures justify such intolerable, diabolical pride, such insolent, such rapacious egoism? Forgive me, prince, I let myself be carried away, but.
“Yes, all that may be so. Maybe you are right. . . .” Myshkin muttered again, “she certainly is very much irritated, and you’re right, no doubt, but…”
“Deserving of compassion? That’s what you mean to say, my kind-hearted friend? But how could you, out of compassion, for the sake of her pleasure, put to shame another, a pure and lofty girl, humiliate her in those haughty, those hated eyes? What will compassion lead you to next? It’s an exaggeration that passes belief! How can you, loving a girl, humiliate her like this before her rival, jilt her for the sake of another woman, in the very presence of that other, after you had yourself made her an honourable offer. . . and you did make her an offer, didn’t you? “Vbu said so before her parents and her sisters! Do you call yourself an honourable man after that, allow me to ask you, prince? And . . . and didn’t you deceive that adorable girl when you told her that you loved her?”
“Yes, yes, you’re right. Ach, I feel that I am to blame!” Myshkin replied, in unutterable distress.
“But is that enough?” cried “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch, indignantly. “Is it sufficient to cry out: ‘Ach, I’m to blame?’ “Vbu are to blame, but yet you persist! And where was your heart then, your ‘Christian’ heart? Why, you saw her face at that moment: well, was she suffering less than the other, that other woman who has come between you? How could you have seen it and allowed it? How could you?”
“But … I didn’t allow it,” muttered the unhappy prince.
“You didn’t allow it?”
“I really didn’t allow anything. I don’t understand to this hour how it all came to pass. I … I was running after Aglaia Ivanovna at the time, but Nastasya Filippovna fell down fainting. And since then they haven’t let me see Aglaia Ivanovna.”
“Never mind! \bu ought to have run after Aglaia even if the other woman was fainting!”
“Yes . . . Yes, I ought to have. . . . She would have died, you know. She would have killed herself, you don’t know her, and … it made no difference, I should have told Aglaia Ivanovna everything afterwards, and . . . you see, “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch, I see that you don’t know everything. Tell me, why won’t they let me see Aglaia Ivanovna? I would have explained everything to her. \bu see, they both talked of the wrong thing, utterly wrong; that’s why it all happened. … I can’t explain it to you at all; but perhaps I could explain it to Aglaia. . . . Oh, dear; oh, dear! You speak of her face at that moment when she ran away…. Oh, dear, I remember it! -… Let us go, let us go!” He jumped hastily up from his seat and pulled Yevgeny Pavlovitch by the hand.
“Where are you going?”
“Let’s go to Aglaia Ivanovna; let’s go at once! …”
“But she’s not in Pavlovsk now, I told you so. And why go to her?”
“She will understand, she will understand!” Myshkin muttered, clasping his hands imploringly. “She would understand that it’s all not that, but something quite different!”
“How do you mean, something quite different? Only, you’re going to marry her, anyhow. So you persist in it…. Are you going to be married or not?”
“Well, yes … lam; yes, lam!”
“Then how is it ‘not that’?”
“No, it’s not that, not that. It makes no difference that I’m going to marry her. That’s nothing, nothing.”
“How do you mean it makes no difference, that it’s nothing? Why, it’s not a trifling matter, is it? You’re marrying a woman you love to make her happy, and Aglaia Ivanovna sees that and knows it. How can you say it makes no difference?”
“Happy? Oh, no! I’m only just marrying her; she wants me to. And what is there in my marrying her? I . . . oh, well, all that’s no matter! Only she would certainly have died. I see now that her marrying Rogozhin was madness. I understand now all that I didn’t understand before, and, you see, when they stood there, facing one another, I couldn’t bear Nastasya Filippovna’s face. . . . \bu don’t know, “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch” — he dropped his voice mysteriously— “I’ve never said this to anyone, not even to Aglaia, but I can’t bear Nastasya Filippovna’s face. … It was true what you said just now about that evening at Nastasya Filippovna’s; but there is one thing you left out because you don’t know it. I looked at her face! That morning, in her portrait, I couldn’t bear the sight of it. . . . Vera, now, Lebedyev’s daughter, has quite different eyes. I . . . I’m afraid of her face!” he added with extraordinary terror.
“You’re afraid of it?”
“Yes; she’s mad—” he whispered, turning pale.
“You’re sure of that?” asked “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch,
with extreme interest.
“Yes, sure. Now I’m sure. Now, during these last days, I’ve become quite sure!”
“But what are you doing, prince?” Yevgeny Pavlovitch cried with horror. “So you’re marrying her from a sort of fear? There’s no understanding it! Without even loving her, perhaps?”
“Oh, no. I love her with my whole heart! Why, she’s … a child! Now she’s a child, quite a child! Oh, you know nothing about it!”
“And at the same time you have declared your love to Aglaia Ivanovna?”
“Oh, yes, yes!”
“How so? Then you want to love both of them?”
“Oh, yes, yes!”
“Upon my word, prince, think what you’re saying!”
“Without Aglaia I’m . . . I absolutely must see her! I . . . I shall soon die in my sleep, I thought I should have died last night in my sleep. Oh, if Aglaia only knew, if she only knew everything . . . absolutely everything I mean. For in this case one needs to know everything, that’s what matters most. Why is it we never can know everything about another person, when one ought to, when that other one’s to blame! . . . But I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m muddled. \bu’ve shocked me very much . . . and does her face look now as it did when she ran away? Oh, yes, I am to blame! Most likely it’s all my fault. I don’t know quite how, but I am to blame. . . . There’s something in all this I can’t explain to you, “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch. I can’t find the words, but . . . Aglaia Ivanovna will understand! Oh, I’ve always believed that she would understand.”
“No, prince, she won’t understand. Aglaia Ivanovna loved you like a woman, like a human being, not like an abstract spirit. Do you know what, my poor prince, the most likely thing is that you’ve never loved either of them!”
“I don’t know, perhaps so . .. perhaps. \bu’re right in a great deal, “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch. You are very clever, Yevgeny Pavlovitch. Oh, my head is beginning to ache again. For God’s sake, let’s go to her! For God’s sake!”
“But I tell you she’s not in Pavlovsk, she’s in Kolmino.”
“Let’s go to Kolmino. Let’s go at once!”
“That’s impossible!” Yevgeny Pavlovitch said emphatically, qettinq up.
“Listen. I’ll write to her. You take a letter!”
“No, prince, no! Spare me such a commission. I can’t!”
They parted. Yevgeny Pavlovitch went away with odd impressions, and in his judgment too the upshot of it was that Myshkin was not in his right mind. And what was the meaning of that face he feared so much, and yet loved! And yet perhaps he really would die without seeing Aglaia, so that Aglaia never would know how much he loved her! “Ha-ha! And how can one love two at