“That’s what comes of telling the truth for once in one’s life!” said Lebedeff. “It reduced him to tears.”
“Never mind!” she laughed, “but why didn’t you come earlier? Perhaps you were expected!”
She fell senseless into his arms.
| “But why wear a coat in holes,” asked the girl, “when your new one is hanging behind the door? Did you not see it?” |
| “I think I have served you faithfully. I never even asked you what happiness you expected to find with Aglaya.” |
| At last they left the house behind them, the prince carrying his bundle. |
“Wasn’t it you,” he said, suddenly turning to the old gentleman, “who saved the student Porkunoff and a clerk called Shoabrin from being sent to Siberia, two or three months since?”
| “What? Gavrila Ardalionovitch? Oh no; he belongs to one of the companies. Look here, at all events put your bundle down, here.” |
“From whom? To whom?”
“Why? Because you have suffered more than we have?”
| “Where is it now, then?” |
| “Marry whom?” asked the prince, faintly. |
“What of that? People will say anything,” said Rogojin drily.
“Enough--enough!” said the latter, with insistence, but all of a tremble with excitement.
“It’s only for mother’s sake that I spare him,” said Gania, tragically.Suddenly Hippolyte jumped up as though he had been shot.
Lebedeff assumed an air of dignity. It was true enough that he was sometimes naive to a degree in his curiosity; but he was also an excessively cunning gentleman, and the prince was almost converting him into an enemy by his repeated rebuffs. The prince did not snub Lebedeff’s curiosity, however, because he felt any contempt for him; but simply because the subject was too delicate to talk about. Only a few days before he had looked upon his own dreams almost as crimes. But Lebedeff considered the refusal as caused by personal dislike to himself, and was hurt accordingly. Indeed, there was at this moment a piece of news, most interesting to the prince, which Lebedeff knew and even had wished to tell him, but which he now kept obstinately to himself.
| Was there something in the whole aspect of the man, today, sufficient to justify the prince’s terror, and the awful suspicions of his demon? Something seen, but indescribable, which filled him with dreadful presentiments? Yes, he was convinced of it--convinced of what? (Oh, how mean and hideous of him to feel this conviction, this presentiment! How he blamed himself for it!) “Speak if you dare, and tell me, what is the presentiment?” he repeated to himself, over and over again. “Put it into words, speak out clearly and distinctly. Oh, miserable coward that I am!” The prince flushed with shame for his own baseness. “How shall I ever look this man in the face again? My God, what a day! And what a nightmare, what a nightmare!” |
“You are exaggerating, you are exaggerating, Lebedeff!” cried his hearers, amid laughter.
“Well?”
| The prince recollected that somebody had told him something of the kind before, and he had, of course, scoffed at it. He only laughed now, and forgot the hint at once. |
| “How?” cried Aglaya--and her lower lip trembled violently. “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--” |
Today, as I have said, she returned from their house with a heavy feeling of dejection. There was a sensation of bitterness, a sort of mocking contempt, mingled with it.
“No, no, read it--read it at once directly, and aloud, aloud!” cried she, calling Colia to her and giving him the journal.--“Read it aloud, so that everyone may hear it!”
Colia and the prince went off together. Alas! the latter had no money to pay for a cab, so they were obliged to walk.