Page:Leo Tolstoy - Father Sergius and Other Stories and Plays - ed. Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright (1911).djvu/49

 Rh "We all loved him. I can imagine you, a schoolgirl in the institute"

"No. After that. It was only a passing infatuation, but I must tell you"

"Well—what?"

"No, it was not simply" She covered her face with her hands.

"What! You gave yourself to him?"

She was silent.

"His mistress?"

Still she did not answer.

He sprang to his feet, and pale as death, with his teeth chattering, stood before her. He now remembered how the Emperor, meeting him on the Nevsky, had congratulated him.

"O my God, what have I done? Stephen!"

"Don't touch me—don't touch me! Oh, how terrible!"

He turned and went to the house. There he met her mother.

"What's the matter with you, prince?"

She stopped, seeing his face.

The blood rushed suddenly to his head.

"You knew it! And you wanted me to shield them! Oh, if you weren't a woman" he shouted, raising his large fist. Then he turned and ran away.

Had the lover of his fiancée been a private