White Nights - XXX

The poor girl’s emotion was so violent that she could not say more; she laid her head upon my shoulder, then upon my bosom, and wept bitterly. I comforted her, I persuaded her, but she could not stop crying; she kept pressing my hand, and saying between her sobs: “Wait, wait, it will be over in a minute! I want to tell you . . . you mustn’t think that these tears — it’s nothing, it’s weakness, wait till it’s over.” . . . At last she left off crying, dried her eyes and we walked on again. I wanted to speak, but she still begged me to wait. We were silent. . . . At last she plucked up courage and began to speak.

“It’s like this,” she began in a weak and quivering voice, in which, however, there was a note that pierced my heart with a sweet pang; “don’t think that I am so light and inconstant, don’t think that I can forget and change so quickly. I have loved him for a whole year, and I swear by God that I have never, never, even in thought, been unfaithful to him. . . . He has despised me, he has been laughing at me — God forgive him! But he has insulted me and wounded my heart. I . . . I do not love him, for I can only love what is magnanimous, what understands me, what is generous; for I am like that myself and he is not worthy of me — well, that’s enough of him. He has done better than if he had deceived my expectations later, and shown me later what he was. . . . Well, it’s over! But who knows, my dear friend,” she went on pressing my hand, “who knows, perhaps my whole love was a mistaken feeling, a delusion — perhaps it began in mischief, in nonsense, because I was kept so strictly by grandmother? Perhaps I ought to love another man, not him, a different man, who would have pity on me and . . . and. . . . But don’t let us say any more about that,” Nastenka broke off, breathless with emotion, “I only wanted to tell you . . .

I wanted to tell you that if, although I love him (no, did love him), if, in spite of this you still say. . . . If you feel that your love is so great that it may at last drive from my heart my old feeling — if you will have pity on

me — if you do not want to leave me alone to my fate, without hope, without consolation — if you are ready to love me always as you do now — I swear to you that gratitude . . . that my love will be at last worthy of your love. . . . Will you take my hand?”

“Nastenka!” I cried breathless with sobs. “Nastenka, oh Nastenka!” “Enough, enough! Well, now it’s quite enough,” she said, hardly able to

control herself. “Well, now all has been said, hasn’t it! Hasn’t it? You are happy — I am happy too. Not another word about it, wait; spare me . . . talk of something else, for God’s sake.”

“Yes, Nastenka, yes! Enough about that, now I am happy. I—— Yes, Nastenka, yes, let us talk of other things, let us make haste and talk. Yes! I am ready.”

And we did not know what to say: we laughed, we wept, we said thousands of things meaningless and incoherent; at one moment we walked along the pavement, then suddenly turned back and crossed the road; then we stopped and went back again to the embankment; we were like children.

“I am living alone now, Nastenka,” I began, “but to-morrow! Of course you know, Nastenka, I am poor, I have only got twelve hundred roubles, but that doesn’t matter.”

“Of course not, and granny has her pension, so she will be no burden. We must take granny.”

“Of course we must take granny. But there’s Matrona.”

“Yes, and we’ve got Fyokla too!”

“Matrona is a good woman, but she has one fault: she has no imagination, Nastenka, absolutely none; but that doesn’t matter.”

“That’s all right — they can live together; only you must move to us to-morrow.”

“To you? How so? All right, I am ready.”

TO BE CONTD..