Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume XI).djvu/220

Rh come to judge me up there, I shall not be I! Are you listening to me? Aren't you bored?'

Sanin was sitting bent up. He raised his head. 'I 'm not at all bored, Maria Nikolaevna, and I am listening to you with curiosity. Only I confess  I wonder why you say all this to me?'

Maria Nikolaevna edged a little away on the sofa.

'You wonder? Are you slow to guess? Or so modest?'

Sanin lifted his head higher than before.

'I tell you all this,' Maria Nikolaevna continued in an unmoved tone, which did not, however, at all correspond with the expression of her face, 'because I like you very much; yes, don't be surprised, I 'm not joking; because since I have met you, it would be painful to me that you had a disagreeable recollection of me not disagreeable even, that I shouldn't mind, but untrue. That's why I have made you come here, and am staying alone with you and talking to you so openly. Yes, yes, openly. I 'm not telling a lie. And observe, Dimitri Pavlovitch, I know you're in love with another woman, that you're going to be married to her. Do justice to my disinterestedness! Though indeed it's a good