THE COMPLETE NOVELLAS & SHORT STORIES OF FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

yes! tell me, talk to me,” said Nastenka with an indescribable gesture. “Perhaps you think it strange that I talk to you like this, but … speak! I will tell you afterwards! I will tell you everything.”

      “You are sorry for me, Nastenka, you are simply sorry for me, my dear little friend! What’s done can’t be mended. What is said cannot be taken back. Isn’t that so? Well, now you know. That’s the starting-point. Very well. Now it’s all right, only listen. When you were sitting crying I thought to myself (oh, let me tell you what I was thinking!), I thought, that (of course it cannot be, Nastenka), I thought that you … I thought that you somehow … quite apart from me, had ceased to love him. Then — I thought that yesterday and the day before yesterday, Nastenka — then I would — I certainly would — have succeeded in making you love me; you know, you said yourself, Nastenka, that you almost loved me. Well, what next? Well, that’s nearly all I wanted to tell you; all that is left to say is how it would be if you loved me, only that, nothing more! Listen, my friend — for any way you are my friend — I am, of course, a poor, humble man, of no great consequence; but that’s not the point (I don’t seem to be able to say what I mean, Nastenka, I am so confused), only I would love you, I would love you so, that even if you still loved him, even if you went on loving the man I don’t know, you would never feel that my love was a burden to you. You would only feel every minute that at your side was beating a grateful, grateful heart, a warm heart ready for your sake…. Oh Nastenka, Nastenka! What have you done to me?”

      “Don’t cry; I don’t want you to cry,” said Nastenka getting up quickly from the seat. “Come along, get up, come with me, don’t cry, don’t cry,” she said, drying her tears with her handkerchief; “let us go now; maybe I will tell you something…. If he has forsaken me now, if he has forgotten me, though I still love him (I do not want to deceive you) … but listen, answer me. If I were to love you, for instance, that is, if I only…. Oh my friend, my friend! To think, to think how I wounded you, when I laughed at your love, when I praised you for not falling in love with me. Oh dear! How was it I did not foresee this, how was it I did not foresee this, how could I have been so stupid? But…. Well, I have made up my mind, I will tell you.”

      “Look here, Nastenka, do you know what? I’ll go away, that’s what I’ll do. I am simply tormenting you. Here you are remorseful for having laughed at me, and I won’t have you … in addition to your sorrow…. Of course it is my fault, Nastenka, but goodbye!”

      “Stay, listen to me: can you wait?”

      “What for? How?”

      “I love him; but I shall get over it, I must get over it, I cannot fail to get over it; I am getting over it, I feel that…. Who knows? Perhaps it will all end to-day, for I hate him, for he has been laughing at me, while you have been weeping here with me, for you have not repulsed me as he has, for you love me while he has never loved me, for in fact, I love you myself…. Yes, I love you! I love you as you love me; I have told you so before, you heard it yourself — I love you because you are better than he is, because you are nobler than he is, because, because he — —”

      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 tomorrow! 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 tomorrow.”

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

      “Yes, hire a room from us. We have a top floor, it’s empty. We had an old lady lodging there, but she has gone away; and I know granny would like to have a young man. I said to her, ‘Why a young man?’ And she said, ‘Oh, because I am old; only don’t you fancy, Nastenka, that I want him as a husband for you.’ So I guessed it was with that idea.”

      “Oh, Nastenka!”

      And we both laughed.

      “Come, that’s enough, that’s enough. But where do you live? I’ve forgotten.”

      “Over that way, near X bridge, Barannikov’s Buildings.”

      “It’s that big house?”

      “Yes, that big house.”

      “Oh, I know, a nice house; only you know you had better give it up and come to us as soon as possible.”

      “Tomorrow, Nastenka, tomorrow; I owe a little for my rent there but that doesn’t matter. I shall soon get my salary.”

      “And do you know I will perhaps give lessons; I will learn something myself and then give lessons.”

      “Capital! And I shall soon get a bonus.”

      “So