'Alexander, you're not delirious? Are you in your senses?'
'I am in my senses,' he answered. 'Directly I heard it, I came straight
to you.'
My heart turned sick and numb, as always happens on realising an
irrevocable misfortune.
'My God! my God! Dead!' I repeated. 'How is it possible? So suddenly! Or
perhaps she took her own life?'
'I don't know,' said Fustov, 'I know nothing. They told me she died at
midnight. And to-morrow she will be buried.'
'At midnight!' I thought.... 'Then she was still alive yesterday when I
fancied I saw her in the window, when I entreated him to hasten to
her....'
'She was still alive yesterday, when you wanted to send me to Ivan
Demianitch's,' said Fustov, as though guessing my thought.
'How little he knew her!' I thought again. 'How little we both knew her!
"High-flown," said he, "all girls are like that."... And at that very
minute, perhaps, she was putting to her lips... Can one love any one and
be so grossly mistaken in them?'
Fustov stood stockstill before my bed, his hands hanging, like a guilty
man.