‘May be! may be so!’ said the prince, faintly; his heart was beating painfully.
‘I knew you would not misunderstand me,’ she said, triumphantly. ‘Prince S. and Evgenie Pavlovitch and Alex-andra don’t understand anything about these two kinds of mind, but, just fancy, mamma does!’
‘You are very like Lizabetha Prokofievna.’ ‘What! surely not?’ said Aglaya.
‘Yes, you are, indeed.’
‘Thank you; I am glad to be like mamma,’ she said, thoughtfully. ‘You respect her very much, don’t you?’ she added, quite unconscious of the naiveness of the question.
‘VERY much; and I am so glad that you have realized the fact.’
‘I am very glad, too, because she is often laughed at by people. But listen to the chief point. I have long thought over the matter, and at last I have chosen you. I don’t wish people to laugh at me; I don’t wish people to think me a ‘lit-tle fool.’ I don’t want to be chaffed. I felt all this of a sudden, and I refused Evgenie Pavlovitch flatly, because I am not going to be forever thrown at people’s heads to be married. I want—I want— well, I’ll tell you, I wish to run away from home, and I have chosen you to help me.’
‘Run away from home?’ cried the prince.
‘Yes—yes—yes! Run away from home!’ she repeated, in a transport of rage. ‘I won’t, I won’t be made to blush every minute by them all! I don’t want to blush before Prince S. or Evgenie Pavlovitch, or anyone, and therefore I have chosen you. I shall tell you everything, EVERYTHING, even the most important things of all, whenever I like, and you are to hide nothing from me on your side. I want to speak to at least one person, as I would to myself. They have suddenly begun to say that I am waiting for you, and in love with you. They began this before you arrived here, and so I didn’t show them the letter, and now they all say it, every one of them. I want to be brave, and be afraid of nobody. I don’t want to go to their balls and things—I want to do good. I have long desired to run away, for I have been kept shut up for twenty years, and they are always trying to marry me off. I wanted to run away when I was fourteen years old—I was a little fool then, I know—but now I have worked it all out, and I have waited for you to tell me about foreign coun-tries. I have never seen a single Gothic cathedral. I must
go to Rome; I must see all the museums; I must study in Paris. All this last year I have been preparing and reading forbidden books. Alexandra and Adelaida are allowed to read anything they like, but I mayn’t. I don’t want to quarrel with my sisters, but I told my parents long ago that I wish to change my social position. I have decided to take up teach-ing, and I count on you because you said you loved children. Can we go in for education together—if not at once, then af-terwards? We could do good together. I won’t be a general’s daughter any more! Tell me, are you a very learned man?’
‘Oh no; not at all.’
‘Oh-h-h! I’m sorry for that. I thought you were. I wonder why I always thought so—but at all events you’ll help me, won’t you? Because I’ve chosen you, you know.’
‘Aglaya Ivanovna, it’s absurd.’
But I will, I WILL run away!’ she cried—and her eyes flashed again with anger—‘and if you don’t agree I shall go and marry Gavrila Ardalionovitch! I won’t be considered a horrible girl, and accused of goodness knows what.’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ cried the prince, almost starting from his seat. ‘What do they accuse you of? Who accuses you?’
‘At home, everybody, mother, my sisters, Prince S., even that detestable Colia! If they don’t say it, they think it. I told them all so to their faces. I told mother and father and ev-erybody. Mamma was ill all the day after it, and next day father and Alexandra told me that I didn’t understand what nonsense I was talking. I informed them that they little knew me— I was not a small child—I understood every
word in the language— that I had read a couple of Paul de Kok’s novels two years since on purpose, so as to know all about everything. No sooner did mamma hear me say this than she nearly fainted!’
A strange thought passed through the prince’s brain; he gazed intently at Aglaya and smiled.
He could not believe that this was the same haughty young girl who had once so proudly shown him Gania’s let-ter. He could not understand how that proud and austere beauty could show herself to be such an utter child—a child who probably did not even now understand some words.
‘Have you always lived at home, Aglaya Ivanovna?’ he asked. ‘I mean, have you never been to school, or college, or anything?’
‘No—never—nowhere! I’ve been at home all my life, corked up in a bottle; and they expect me to be married straight out of it. What are you laughing at again? I observe that you, too, have taken to laughing at me, and range your-self on their side against me,’ she added, frowning angrily.
‘Don’t irritate me—I’m bad enough without that—I don’t know what I am doing sometimes. I am persuaded that you came here today in the full belief that I am in love with you, and that I arranged this meeting because of that,’ she cried, with annoyance.
‘I admit I was afraid that that was the case, yesterday,’ blundered the prince (he was rather confused), ‘but today I am quite convinced that ‘
‘How?’ cried Aglaya—and her lower lip trembled vio-lently. ‘You were AFRAID that I—you dared to think that
I—good gracious! you suspected, perhaps, that I sent for you to come here in order to catch you in a trap, so that they should find us here together, and make you marry me—‘
‘Aglaya Ivanovna, aren’t you ashamed of saying such a thing? How could such a horrible idea enter your sweet, in-nocent heart? I am certain you don’t believe a word of what you say, and probably you don’t even know what you are talking about.’
Aglaya sat with her eyes on the ground; she seemed to have alarmed even herself by what she had said.
‘No, I’m not; I’m not a bit ashamed!’ she murmured. ‘And how do you know my heart is innocent? And how dared you send me a love— letter that time?’
‘LOVE-LETTER? My letter a love-letter? That letter was the most respectful of letters; it went straight from my heart, at what was perhaps the most painful moment of my life! I thought of you at the time as a kind of light. I—‘
‘Well, very well, very well!’ she said, but quite in a dif-ferent tone. She was remorseful now, and bent forward to touch his shoulder, though still trying not to look him in the face, as if the more persuasively to beg him not to be an-gry with her. ‘Very well,’ she continued, looking thoroughly ashamed of herself, ‘I feel that I said a very foolish thing. I only did it just to try you. Take it as unsaid, and if I offended you, forgive me. Don’t look straight at me like that, please; turn your head away. You called it a ‘horrible idea’; I only said it to shock you. Very often I am myself afraid of saying what I intend to say, and out it comes all the same. You have just told me that you wrote that letter at the most painful
moment of your life. I know what moment that was!’ she added softly, looking at the ground again.
‘Oh, if you could know all!’
‘I DO know all!’ she cried, with another burst of indig-nation. ‘You were living in the same house as that horrible woman with whom you ran away.’ She did not blush as she said this; on the contrary, she grew pale, and started from her seat, apparently oblivious of what she did, and imme-diately sat down again. Her lip continued to tremble for a long time.
There was silence for a moment. The prince was taken aback by the suddenness of this last reply, and did not know to what he should attribute it.
‘I don’t love you a bit!’ she said suddenly, just as though the words had exploded from her mouth.
The prince did not answer, and there was silence again. ‘I love Gavrila Ardalionovitch,’ she said, quickly; but hardly audibly, and with her head bent lower than ever.
‘That is NOT true,’ said the prince, in an equally low voice.
‘What! I tell stories, do I? It is true! I gave him my prom-ise a couple of days ago on this very seat.’
The prince was startled, and
