Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VII).djvu/256

Rh come to love Solomin; as for him he has loved you ever since he first set eyes on you at the Sipyagins'. That was no secret to me though we did run away together a few days after. Ah, that morning! How glorious it was, how sweet and young! It comes to me now as a token, as a symbol of your life together—yours and his—and I was merely by accident in his place that day. But it's time to make an end; I don't want to work on your feelings. I only want to justify myself To-morrow you will have some very sorrowful moments. But there's no help for it! There's no other way, is there? Good-bye, Marianna, my good, true girl! Good-bye, Solomin! I leave her in your care. Live happily—live to the good of others; and you, Marianna, think of me only when you are happy. Think of me as a man who was true and good too, but one for whom it was somehow more fitting to die than to live. Whether I really loved you, I don't know, my dear; but I know that I have never felt a feeling stronger, and that it would have been more terrible to me to die without that feeling to carry with me to the grave.

'Marianna! if you ever meet a girl called Mashurina—Solomin knows her, I fancy—by the way, you have seen her too—tell her I thought