The house became so dreary to Tanya that her loneliness during the day
frightened her, though the presence of Boris irritated her more than
ever. She felt as if some member of the household had died. Wherever
she turned she beheld some trace of the student; worse than anything
else was the window-plant, which Dalsky had left behind him. She
avoided looking at it, lest it should thrill her with a crushing sense
of her desolation, of her bereavement, as it were. Yet, when she was
about to remove it, she had not the heart to do it. She strayed about
like a shadow, and often felt as though it were enough to touch her
to make her melt away in tears.
One evening, after an unbearable silence, succeeding a sharp
altercation, Boris asked, pleadingly:--
"What has become of you, Tanya? I simply fail to recognize you."
"If you understand, then it is foolish to ask," she retorted, with a
smile of mild sarcasm, eyeing the floor.
"I understand nothing." But as the words left his lips, something
suddenly dawned upon him which made his blood run cold. An array of
situations which had produced an impression upon him, but which had
been lost upon his consciousness, now uprose in his mind. He grew
ashen pale.
"Well, so much the worse," said she.
"Tell me, and I will know," he rejoined, with studied irony, while in
his heart he was praying Heaven that his misgivings might prove
baseless.
"Oh! I think you do understand; you are not so blind." Her voice now
sounded alien in his ears, and she herself seemed to him suddenly
changed--as if she had in one moment become transmuted into an older,
wiser, sterner, and more beautiful, fiercely beautiful, woman.
"I swear to you that I do not know anything."
"Very well, then; I shall write it," she said, with a sudden
determination, rising to produce paper, pen, and ink.
"All right," he said, in abject cowardice, with a meaningless smile.