The Adolescent

“No, you’re not ridiculous, you’re merely a depraved society woman!” He turned terribly pale. “I also didn’t finish earlier, when I asked you why you came. Would you like me to finish? There exists a certain letter, a document, and you are terribly afraid of it, because your father, with that letter in his hands, might curse you while he lives and legally deprive you of your inheritance in his will. You are afraid of that letter, and you have come for that letter,” he spoke nearly trembling all over, and his teeth even almost chattering. She listened to him with a wistful and pained expression on her face.

“I know that you can cause me considerable unpleasantness,” she said, as if warding off his words, “but I’ve come not so much to persuade you not to persecute me, as to see you yourself. I’ve even wished very much to meet you for a long time now, I myself . . . But I find you the same as you were before,” she suddenly added, as if carried away by a particular and decisive thought and even by some strange and sudden feeling.

“And you hoped to see me different? This—after that letter of mine about your depravity? Tell me, did you come here without any fear?”

“I came because I once loved you; but, you know, I beg you, please, don’t threaten me with anything while we’re together now, don’t remind me of my bad thoughts and feelings. If you could talk to me about something else, I’d be very glad. Let there be threats afterwards, but something different now . . . I truly came to see and hear you for a moment. Well, but if you can’t, then kill me straight out, only don’t threaten me and don’t torture yourself before me,” she concluded, looking at him in strange expectation, as if she really supposed he might kill her. He got up from his chair again and, looking at her with an ardent gaze, said firmly:

“You will leave here without the slightest offense.”

“Ah, yes, your word of honor!” she smiled.

“No, not only because I gave my word of honor in the letter, but because I want to and shall think about you all night . . .”

“To torment yourself ?”

“I always imagine you when I’m alone. All I do is talk to you. I go into slums and dens and, as a contrast, you appear before me at once. But you always laugh at me, as now . . .” he said as if beside himself.

“Never, never have I laughed at you!” she exclaimed in a deeply moved voice and as if with the greatest compassion showing on her face. “If I came, I tried as hard as I could to do it so as not to hurt you in any way,” she suddenly added. “I came here to tell you that I almost love you . . . Forgive me, I may not have said it right,” she added hastily.

He laughed.

“What makes you unable to pretend? What makes you such a simpleton, what makes you unlike everyone else . . . Well, how can you say to a man you’re driving away, ‘I almost love you’?”

“I just didn’t know how to put it,” she hurried on, “I didn’t say it right; it’s because I’ve always been abashed in your presence and have never known how to speak, ever since our first meeting. And if I used the wrong words when I said I ‘almost love you,’ in my thought it was almost so—that’s why I said it, though I love you with that . . . well, that general love with which one loves everyone and which there’s no shame in confessing . . .”

He listened silently, not taking his ardent gaze off her.

“I, of course, offend you,” he went on as if beside himself. “This must indeed be what they call passion . . . I know one thing, that with you I’m finished; without you also. It’s all the same with you or without you, wherever you are, you’re always with me. I also know that I can hate you very much, more than I love you . . . However, I’ve long ceased thinking of anything—it’s all the same to me. I’m only sorry that I love a woman like you . . .”

His voice faltered; he went on as if breathless:

“What’s the matter? You find what I’m saying wild?” He smiled a pale smile. “I think that, if only it would attract you, I could stand on one leg on a pillar somewhere for thirty years . . . I see you pity me, your face says, ‘I’d love you if I could, but I can’t . . .’ Yes? Never mind, I have no pride. I’m ready, like a beggar, to take any charity from you—any . . . do you hear? . . . What pride can a beggar have?”

She got up and went over to him.

“My friend!” she said, touching his shoulder with her hand and with inexpressible feeling in her face. “I cannot listen to such words! I’ll think of you all my life as of the most precious of men, as of the greatest of hearts, as of something sacred out of all that I can respect and love. Andrei Petrovich, understand my words: there’s something I came for now, dear man, dear before and now! I’ll never forget how you shook my mind during our first meetings. Let’s part as friends, and you will be my most serious and most dear thought in all my life!”