"And who else, then?" he asks, with desperate harshness. "Do you not
know that I love you?"
"Me?" she repeats, hesitatingly, and paling.
"Do you then believe that it has seemed to me worth the trouble to look
at another girl since I have known you? Oh, love, darling, only one!"
The for years restrained fire of his nature has awakened. Her silence
encourages him. He kneels at her feet, draws her hands to his lips. He
is no longer the well-bred young diplomat whom Nita had formerly known;
he is Lensky's son. More slender, with more finely cut features, his
face yet, in the expression, in the kind trace about the mouth, in the
violent demand and still tender supplication of his glance, resembles
his father's quite mysteriously. It is the same coaxing voice with
which Lensky, in his good moods, if he had wished, could have charmed
down an angel from heaven; they are the same full, warm lips.
His words she has listened to without moving, but as his lips touch her
hands she repulses him with a violent movement.
"Leave me!" she gasps. "Go!"
Dizzily he rises. Such an expression of anxiety, of horror is depicted
on her face that his pride is up in arms. "Yet I have said nothing
insulting to you," says he, violently, and looks piercingly at her, as
if he expected that she would reply something. But as she remains
silent, he speaks, with difficulty forcing himself to be calm: "That
you refuse my hand is your affair--at heart I was prepared for that;
but you shake me off as an impertinent. You extinguish the sun of my
life, and do not once tell me that you are sorry for me. Whom, then,
have I loved so passionately, so boundlessly? The girl who is capable
of such horrible treatment I simply did not know!"
His voice sounds harsh, but his eyes still supplicate her, tenderly,
despairingly. He cannot believe that all is over, that she will let him
leave her thus. She will yet find a friendly word for him as farewell.
She stands silent, resting her hand on the mantel, her eyes turned from
him. She wishes to say something, but it does not pass her lips. Her
face is ashy pale; she trembles; dizzily she gropes for a support.
Forgetting all, he makes a step forward to assist her, to support her.
As if in deadly fear, she repels him. Her face expresses a kind of
horror.
A last time his eyes rest on her longingly, desperately--then he goes.
When Sophie, a little later, returns, she finds Nita deathly pale,
stretched on her bed, her hands folded over her breast, "like a corpse
in the coffin," said Sophie, when she told of it later.
She wished to steal away on tip-toes, so as not to disturb her friend,
but Nita held her back. She looked anxiously, piercingly, in her face.
Then Sophie bent over her. "I have just met Nikolai," says she. "I know
what has taken place. Oh, Nita, Nita, you have given him up for my
sake, and now you are breaking your heart over it!"
"I?"--Nita smiled sadly--"on his account? I am sorry that he suffers,
but else--no, no, my poor Sonia, you are mistaken."
"Then I do not understand," says Sophie in astonishment. "What has so
shocked you?"
"Me?" Nita holds her hand before her eyes. "A slight heart cramp; I
have it at times. I was frightened. It was very foolish, but I cannot
help it. It comes over me suddenly sometimes. Poor Sonia, poor, dear
little Sonia! Are you not, then, angry with me?"
Sophie had seated herself by her friend's bed; she was pale, but bore
up bravely. "What is there to be angry about?" said she, wearily. "I do
not understand why I did not long ago notice it. It is natural that he
loves you."
"Ah, Sophie, it is only a mistaken idea; he does not know his own
heart. It will all pass. He must return to you, learn to love you,"
assures Nita.
"Never! If you had seen him go down the steps slowly, step for step, as
if carrying something wounded, you would not say that. Poor Colia!"
And, suddenly raising her voice, quite reproachfully: "It is terrible
that he must suffer so. Heavens! do you really not understand what the
love of such a man is worth?"
A shudder ran over Nita's slender limbs. "Leave me alone, my dear,
brave Sonia; only for a little while," murmured she. "Leave me alone."