Page:Dostoevsky - White Nights and Other Stories.djvu/62

 has despised me, he has been laughing at me—God forgive him! But he has insulted me and wounded my heart. I. . . I do not love him, for I can only love what is magnanimous, what understands me, what is generous; for I am like that myself and he is not worthy of me—well, that's enough of him. He has done better than if he had deceived my expectations later, and shown me later what he was. . . . Well, it's over! But who knows, my dear friend," she went on pressing my hand, "who knows, perhaps my whole love was a mistaken feeling, a delusion—perhaps it began in mischief, in nonsense, because I was kept so strictly by grandmother? Perhaps I ought to love another man, not him, a different one, who would have pity on me and. . . and. . . But don't let us say any more about that," Nastenka broke off, breathless with emotion, "I only wanted to tell you. . . I wanted to tell you that if, although I love him (no, did love him), if, in spite of this you still say. . . . If you feel that your love is so great that it may at last drive from my heart my old feeling—if you will have pity on me—if you do not want to leave me alone to my fate, without hope, without consolation—if you are ready to love me always as you do now—I swear to you that gratitude. . . that my love will be at last worthy of your love. . . . Will you take my hand?"

"Nastenka!" I cried breathless with sobs. "Nastenka, oh Nastenka!"

"Enough, enough! Well, now it's quite enough," she said, hardly able to control herself. "Well, now all has been said, hasn't it? Hasn't it? You are happy—I am happy too. Not another word about it, wait; spare me . . . talk of something else, for God's sake."

"Yes, Nastenka, yes! Enough about that, now I am happy. IYes, Nastenka, yes, let us talk of other things, let us make haste and talk. Yes! I am ready."

And we did not know what to say: we laughed, we wept, we said thousands of things meaningless and incoherent; at one moment we walked along the pavement, then suddenly turned