'I suggested it... not for the game,'... Michel said in an undertone,
also setting the pieces, 'but to have you nearer me.'
I made no answer, but, without asking which should begin, moved a
pawn... Michel did not move in reply... I looked at him. His head was
stretched a little forward; pale all over, with imploring eyes he signed
towards my hand...
Whether I understood him... I don't remember, but something
instantaneously whirled into my head.... Hesitating, scarcely breathing,
I took up the knight and moved it right across the board. Michel bent
down swiftly, and catching my fingers with his lips, and pressing them
against the board, he began noiselessly and passionately kissing
them.... I had no power, I had no wish to draw them back; with my other
hand I hid my face, and tears, as I remember now, cold but blissful...
oh, what blissful tears!... dropped one by one on the table. Ah, I knew,
with my whole heart I felt at that moment, all that he was who held my
hand in his power! I knew that he was not a boy, carried away by a
momentary impulse, not a Don Juan, not a military Lovelace, but one of
the noblest, the best of men... and he loved me!
'Oh, my Susanna!' I heard Michel whisper, 'I will never make you shed
other tears than these.'
He was wrong... he did.
But what use is there in dwelling on such memories... especially,
especially now?
Michel and I swore to belong to each other. He knew that Semyon
Matveitch would never let him marry me, and he did not conceal it from
me. I had no doubt about it myself and I rejoiced, not that he did not
deceive me--he _could not_ deceive--but that he did not try to
delude himself. For myself I asked for nothing, and would have followed
where and how he chose. 'You shall be my wife,' he repeated to me. 'I am
not Ivanhoe; I know that happiness is not with Lady Rowena.'
Michel soon regained his health. I could not continue going to see him,
but everything was decided between us. I was already entirely absorbed
in the future; I saw nothing of what was passing around me, as though I
were floating on a glorious, calm, but rushing river, hidden in mist.
But we were watched, we were being spied upon. Once or twice I noticed
my stepfather's malignant eyes, and heard his loathsome laugh.... But
that laugh, those eyes as it were emerged for an instant from the
mist... I shuddered, but forgot it directly, and surrendered myself
again to the glorious, swift river...
On the day before the departure of Michel--we had planned together that
he was to turn back secretly on the way and fetch me--I received from
him through his trusted valet a note, in which he asked me to meet him
at half-past nine in the summer billiard-room, a large, low-pitched
room, built on to the big house in the garden. He wrote to me that he
absolutely must speak with me and arrange things. I had twice already
met Michel in the billiard-room... I had the key of the outer door. As
soon as it struck half-past nine I threw a warm wrap over my shoulders,
stepped quietly out of the lodge, and made my way successfully over the
crackling snow to the billiard-room. The moon, wrapped in vapour, stood
a dim blur just over the ridge of the roof, and the wind whistled
shrilly round the corner of the wall. A shiver passed over me, but I put
the key into the lock, went into the room, closed the door behind me,
turned round... A dark figure became visible against one of the walls,
took a couple of steps forward, stopped...
'Michel,' I whispered.
'Michel is locked up by my orders, and this is I!' answered a voice,
which seemed to rend my heart...
Before me stood Semyon Matveitch!