Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/118

. Nikíta!

. What about Nikíta? I am Nikíta. What do you want? Come now, talk!

. I see you want to give me up and forget me.

. What is there to remember? You don't know yourself. There you were standing around the corner, and you sent Anyútka for me. I did not come, so you ought to have known that I did not want you, very simply. Go away now!

. You don't want me! Now you don't want me. And I believed you that you would love me. First you ruin me, and then you do not want me.

. You are saying all this to no purpose and in vain. You have been talking to my father, too. Do me a favour and go away.

. You know yourself that I have not loved anybody but you. I would not feel any worse for it, if you did not marry me. I am not guilty of anything before you, so why do you no longer love me? Why?

. There is no sense in threshing out all this. Go away! O foolish women!

. I am not pained because you have deceived me, having promised to marry me, but because you no longer love me. And not so much because you no longer love me as because you have exchanged me for another,—I know for whom.

(angrily walks up to her). What good is there in discussing matters with a woman? She won't listen to reason. Go away, I say, or something bad will come of it.

. Something bad? Well, you will beat me? Strike me! Don't turn your face away. O Nikíta!

. It is not good. People might come upon us. What good is there in such useless talk?

. So this is the end. What has been is not to be. You command me to forget. Remember, Nikíta!