Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume V).djvu/263

Rh assistance, you no longer love me, and you don't know how to tell me so.'

Litvinov involuntarily shuddered. 'Why?' ... he said, hardly intelligibly, 'why could you suppose?. . . I really don't understand. . .' 'What ! isn't it the truth ? Isn't it the truth ?—tell me, tell me.' Tatyana turned quite round to Litvinov; her face, with her hair brushed back from it, approached his face, and her eyes, which for so long had not looked at him, seemed to penetrate into his eyes. 'Isn't it the truth?' she repeated. He said nothing, did not utter a single sound. He could not have lied at that instant, even if he had known she would believe him, and that his lie would save her; he was not even able to bear her eyes upon him. Litvinov said nothing, but she needed no answer, she read the answer in his very silence, in those guilty downcast eyes—and she turned away again and dropped the book. . . . She had been still uncertain till that instant, and Litvinov understood that; he understood that she had been still uncertain—and how hideous, actually hideous was all that he was doing. He flung himself on his knees before her. 'Tanya,' he cried, 'if only you knew how