I leaned over and spoke to it. I asked it if my heart would ever know
love. It said it thought so.
On the way home I passed an onion.
It lay upon the road.
Someone had stepped upon its stem and crushed it. How it must have
suffered. I placed it in my bosom. All night it lay beside my pillow.
Another Day.
My heart is yearning for love! How is it that I can love no one?
I have tried and I cannot. My father—Ivan Ivanovitch—he is so big and
so kind, and yet I cannot love him; and my mother, Katoosha
Katooshavitch, she is just as big, and yet I cannot love her. And my
brother, Dimitri Dimitrivitch, I cannot love him.
And Alexis Alexovitch!
I cannot love him. And yet I am to marry him. They have set the day. It
is a month from to-day. One month. Thirty days. Why cannot I love
Alexis? He is tall and strong. He is a soldier. He is in the Guard of
the Czar, Nicholas Romanoff, and yet I cannot love him.
Next Day but one.
How they cramp and confine me here—Ivan Ivanovitch my father, and my
mother (I forget her name for the minute), and all the rest.