Page:Oblomov (1915 English translation).djvu/183

Rh reading and explaining, and also to pay sundry visits to the Hermitage Museum. In the end how he trembled whenever she asked him a question!

"Why do you not say something?" she would say to him. "Surely it cannot be that the subject wearies you?"

"No, but how I love you!" he would reply, as though awakening from a trance; to which she would retort—

"Do you really? But that is not what I have just asked you."

On another occasion he said to her—

"Cannot you see what is taking place in me? To me, speaking is a difficulty. Give me your hand, give me your hand! There seems to be something hindering me, something weighing me down. It is a something that is like the great rock which oppresses a man during deep sorrow. And, strangely enough, the effect of it is the same whether I happen to be sad or gay. Somehow my breath seems to hurt me as I draw it, and occasionally I come near to weeping. Yet, like a man overcome with grief, I feel that I should be lightened and relieved if I could weep. What, think you, is amiss with me?"

She looked at him with a smile of