Crimsoning, she tore away her hand. "For Heaven's sake, what are you
thinking of?" said she, and started back with a proud, almost scornful
gesture.
Then a horrible anger overcame him.
"I was stupid, I was mistaken in you. You think no more nobly or better
than the others!" he burst out.
"I do not understand you. What do you mean?" murmured she.
What else had she to ask? Why did she not go, but stood before him, as
if paralyzed, with her pale, seductive loveliness, surrounded by
moonlight?
"I mean that if you observe our relations from this conventional
standpoint, your behavior to me was a heartless, arrogant abomination."
"But, Boris Nikolaivitch, that is all foolishness. You do not know what
you are saying," she stammered, quite beside herself.
"So! I do not know what I am saying?" He had now stepped close up to
her. "And if I, mistaking your coquetries--yes, that is the word; blush
now and be a little ashamed--if I, mistaking your coquetries, have
permitted myself to petition for your hand? Oh, how you start!
Naturally, you had never thought of such a thing!"
His voice was hoarse and rasping, his face very calm and as if
petrified by anger and such a mental torment as he had never before
experienced. "But go! Why do you stay and torture me? I will no longer
look at you. I abominate you, and still I love you so passionately, so
madly!"
Yes, why did she still not go? He could endure it no longer--he clasped
her to his breast and kissed her with his hot, burning lips. Then she
pushed him from her and fled.
He looked after her. Now all was over. For one moment he remained
standing on the same spot, then, with deeply bowed head, dragging his
feet along slowly, he passed through the vestibule and left, without
thinking of his hat, which he had left in the drawing-room.
For the remainder of the evening Natalie's whole being betrayed only
haste and uneasiness. She spoke more and quicker than formerly, laughed
frequently, and told the gayest stories.
When her Petersburg cousins wished to tease her with Lensky's
enthusiasm for her, and laughingly called him "your genius," she
mentioned him indifferently, quite disapprovingly, shrugged her
shoulders over his talent as composer--yes, even found fault with his
playing. She was friendly, quite inviting, to Pachotin; she no longer
knew what she did, only when he wished to give the conversation a more
earnest turn she broke it off suddenly and remorselessly.
When at last, at last, the drawing-room was empty and she might
withdraw, she locked herself in her room, threw herself down before the
holy picture before which she always said her evening prayer. But,
however she tried to pray, she could not. She did not know for what she
should pray. Her cheeks burned with dreadful shame. How could he have
so far forgotten himself with her!
She threw open a window. What did it matter to her that they said the
Roman night air was poisonous? She would have liked to take the Roman
fever, would have liked to die. Her window opened on the street. The
Via Giulia was divided by the moonlight into two parts, one light and
one dark. All was quiet, empty, deserted. Then there was a sound of
slow, dragging steps, and two lowered voices whispered down there in
the silent solitude. It was probably a pair of belated lovers, and
suddenly there was a soft, tender sound through the mild May night. She
caught her breath, closed the window, and turned back to her room.
Half-undressed, she sat on the edge of her little cool white bed and
thought again and again--of the same thing--of his kiss.
* * * * *
"Why has 'your genius' so suddenly tired of Rome? He leaves to-day,"
remarked the Jeliagins, who had come to lunch the next morning in the
Palazzo Morsini.
They were staying at the same hotel as Lensky--that is to say, in the
"Europe"--and had spoken to him in the court of the hotel. "He looked
miserably," they added, with a haughty glance. "Either he has Roman
fever or you have broken his heart."
Then they spoke of other things. Soon after lunch they went away.
Meanwhile Lensky stumbled up and down, up and down, in his room. A sick
lady whose room was beneath his, at last sent up by the waiter and
begged him to be quiet.
His departure was fixed for seven o'clock; it struck one, it struck
four.
Should he leave without having made a parting call upon the Princess
Assanow run away like any fellow who has borrowed thirty rubles? "But
they will not receive me," he thought, "if the princess has told her
mother. But, no, she will have said nothing; she is too proud. What a
lovely being! How could I only-- Oh, if I might at least ask her
pardon! But what kind of a pardon would it be? Such a thing a woman
pardons only if she loves, and how should she love me, a beast as I am?
She must have an aversion for me."
He resolved to take leave by letter. He tried it in French and Russian,
but could complete nothing. Ashamed of his laughable incapacity, he
tore up the different sheets of letter-paper adorned with "_Des
circonstances imprevues_," or "_La reconnaissance sincere que_."
Five o'clock! He hastened across the courtyard, sprang into a carriage.
"Palazzo Morsini, Via Giulia," he called to the coachman, and commanded
him to drive fast.
When he ascended the well-known stairs he asked himself a last time if
he would be received.
The servant conducted him to the boudoir of the old princess. She broke
off her game of patience to greet him, only betrayed a slight
astonishment at his sudden departure, and said that she and Natalie
should soon follow his example and go North, probably to Baden-Baden,
for the heat in Rome began to be unbearable. Then she rang for the
maid, whom she commissioned to tell the princess that Boris
Nikolaivitch had come to take leave.
Lensky waited in breathless excitement. The maid came back with the
decision: The princess was very ill and had lain down with a headache.
"Quite as I expected," thought Lensky, while the princess remarked
politely, "She will be very sorry."
Then he kissed the old lady's hand, she touched his forehead with
her lips in the Russian custom, wished him a pleasant journey, he
thanked her a last time for all the friendship she had shown him, and
went--went quite slowly through the large empty room, in which the dust
danced in a broad sunbeam which lay across the marble floor, and in
which the flowers which she had arranged so charmingly yesterday now
stood withered in their vases.
"Shall I never see her again, never--never?" he asked himself. He would
have given his life for a last friendly glance from her. What use was
it to think of that--it was all over!
Then suddenly he heard something near him like the rustling of an
angel's wings. He looked up. Natalie stood before him, deathly pale,
with black rings around her eyes, with carelessly arranged hair. A
passionate pity, a tender anxiety overcame him. "How she has suffered
through my offence!" he told himself and rushed up to her. "Natalie,
can you forgive me?" he called.
Her great, sad eyes were raised to him with an expression of helpless,
ashamed tenderness, as if they would say, "And you ask that!" She moved
her lips, but no word came.
He held her little hands trembling with fever in his. She did not draw
them away. He grew dizzy. For one moment they were both silent, then he
whispered, drawing her closer to him, "Do you love me, then? Could you
resolve to bear my name, to share my whole existence?"