'Sophia Nikolaevna,' I began, watching her intently from one side. 'I
ought to tell you a piece of news, news disagreeable to me.'
'News? what is it?'
'I'll tell you.... Up till now I have been mistaken in you, completely
mistaken.'
'How was that?' she rejoined, going on playing, and keeping her eyes
fixed on her fingers.
'I imagined you to be open; I imagined that you were incapable of
hypocrisy, of hiding your feelings, deceiving....'
Sophia bent her face closer over the music.
'I don't understand you.'
'And what's more,' I went on; 'I could never have conceived that you,
at your age, were already quite capable of acting a part in such
masterly fashion.'
Sophia's hands faintly trembled above the keys. 'Why are you saying
this?' she said, still not looking at me; 'I play a part?'
'Yes, you do.' (She smiled ... I was seized with spiteful fury.) ...
'You pretend to be indifferent to a man and ... and you write letters
to him,' I added in a whisper.
Sophia's cheeks grew white, but she did not turn to me: she played the
nocturne through to the end, got up, and closed the piano.
'Where are you going?' I asked her in some perplexity. 'You have no
answer to make me?'
'What answer can I make you? I don't know what you 're talking
about.... And I am not good at pretending....'
She began putting by the music.
The blood rushed to my head. 'No; you know what I am talking about,' I
said, and I too got up from my seat; 'or if you like, I will remind you
directly of some of your expressions in one letter: "be as careful as
before"....'
Sophia gave a faint start.
'I never should have expected this of you,' she said at last.
'I never should have expected,' I retorted, 'that you, Sophia
Nikolaevna, would have deigned to notice a man who ...'
Sophia turned with a rapid movement to me; I instinctively stepped back
a little from her; her eyes, always half closed, were so wide open that
they looked immense, and they glittered wrathfully under her frowning
brows.
'Oh! if that's it,' she said, 'let me tell you that I love that man,
and that it's absolutely no consequence to me what you think about him
or about my love for him. And what business is it of yours? ... What
right have you to speak of this? If I have made up my mind ...'
She stopped speaking, and went hurriedly out of the room. I stood
still. I felt all of a sudden so uncomfortable and so ashamed that I
hid my face in my hands. I realised all the impropriety, all the
baseness of my behaviour, and, choked with shame and remorse, I stood
as it were in disgrace. 'Mercy,' I thought, 'what I've done!'
'Anton Nikititch,' I heard the maid-servant saying in the outer-room,
'get a glass of water, quick, for Sophia Nikolaevna.'
'What's wrong?' answered the man.
'I fancy she's crying....'