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RUDIN ‘What do you mean? What enterprise?’

‘Why, I proposed to your brother that we should go on our travels, to distract his mind, and take you with us. To look after you especially I would take on myself. ’

‘That’s capital!’ cried Alexandra Pavlovna. ‘I can fancy how you would look after me. Why, you would let me die of hunger.’

‘You say so, Alexandra Pavlovna, because you don’t know me. You think I am a perfect blockhead, a log; but do you know I am capable of melting like sugar, of spending whole days on my knees?’

‘I should like to see that, I must say!’

Lezhnyov suddenly got up. ‘Well, marry me, Alexandra Pavlovna, and you will see all that’

Alexandra Pavlovna blushed up to her ears.

‘What did you say, Mihailo Mihailitch?’ she murmured in confusion.

‘I said what it has been for ever so long,’ answered Lezhnyov, ‘on the tip of my tongue to say a thousand times over. I have brought it out at last, and you must act as you think best. But I will go away now, so as not to be in your way. If you will be my wife I 187