White Nights - XXI

I went to meet her with a full heart, and was all impatient. I had no presentiment that I should feel as I do now, that it would not all end happily. She was beaming with pleasure; she was expecting an answer. The answer was himself. He was to come, to run at her call. She arrived a whole hour before I did. At first she giggled at everything, laughed at every word I said. I began talking, but relapsed into silence.

“Do you know why I am so glad,” she said, “so glad to look at you? Why I like you so much today?”

“Well?” I asked, and my heart began throbbing.

“I like you because you have not fallen in love with me. You know that some men in your place would have been pestering and worrying me, would have been sighing miserably, while you are so nice!”

Then she wrung my hand so hard that I almost cried out. She laughed.

“Goodness, what a friend you are!” She began gravely a minute later. “God sent you to me. What would have happened to me if you had not been with me now? How disinterested you are! How truly you care for me! When I get married, we will be great friends, more than brother and sister; I shall care almost as I do for him...”

I felt horribly sad at that moment, yet something like laughter was stirring in my soul.

“You are very much upset,” I said, “You are frightened, you think he won’t come.”

“Oh dear!” she answered; “If I were less happy, I believe I should cry at your lack of faith, at your reproaches. However, you have made me think and have given me a lot to think about which I shall think later, and now I will own that you are right. Yes, I am somehow not myself. I am secretive and I feel everything as it were too lightly. But hush! that’s enough about feelings....”

At that moment we heard footsteps and in the darkness we saw a figure coming towards us. We both were startled; she almost cried out; I dropped her hand and made a movement as though to walk away. But we were mistaken, it was not him.

TO BE CONTINUED