Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume XIV).djvu/180

Rh and meaningly. Baburin buttoned up his coat and went out.

When I was left alone with Musa, she looked at me with a somewhat changed glance, and observed in a voice which was also changed, and with no smile: 'I don't know, Piotr Petrovitch, what you think of me now, but I dare say you remember what I used to be. I was self-confident, light-hearted and not good; I wanted to live for my own pleasure. But I want to tell you this: when I was abandoned, and was like one lost, and was only waiting for God to take me, or to pluck up spirit to make an end of myself,—once more, just as in Voronezh, I met with Paramon Semyonitch—and he saved me once again Not a word that could wound me did I hear from him, not a word of reproach; he asked nothing of me—I was not worthy of that; but he loved me and I became his wife. What was I to do? I had failed of dying; and I could not live either after my own choice What was I to do with myself? Even so—it was a mercy to be thankful for. That is all.'

She ceased, turned away for an instant the same submissive smile came back to her lips. 'Whether life's easy for me, you needn't ask,' was the meaning I fancied now in that smile.

The conversation passed to ordinary subjects. Musa told me that Punin had left a cat that