"Yes, VERY!" she answered, and turned her face to look at me with an expression so kind that I ceased to be afraid. I went on:
"Particularly since supper.
Yet if you could only know how I regret" (I had nearly said) "how miserable I am at your going, and to think that we shall see each other no more!"
"But why SHOULDN'T we?" she asked, looking gravely at the corner of her pocket–handkerchief, and gliding her fingers over a latticed screen which we were passing. "Every Tuesday and Friday I go with Mamma to the Iverskoi Prospect.
I suppose you go for walks too sometimes?"
"Well, certainly I shall ask to go for one next Tuesday, and, if they won't take me I shall go by myself—even without my hat, if necessary.
I know the way all right."
"Do you know what I have just thought of?" she went on. "You know, I call some of the boys who come to see us THOU. Shall you and I call each other THOU too?
Wilt THOU?" she added, bending her head towards me and looking me straight in the eyes.
At this moment a more lively section of the Grosvater dance began.
"Give me your hand," I said, under the impression that the music and din would drown my exact words, but she smilingly replied, "THY hand, not YOUR hand."
Yet the dance was over before I had succeeded in saying THOU, even though I kept conning over phrases in which the pronoun could be employed—and employed more than once.
All that I wanted was the courage to say it.
"Wilt THOU?" and "THY hand" sounded continually in my ears, and caused in me a kind of intoxication I could hear and see nothing but Sonetchka.
I watched her mother take her curls, lay them flat behind her ears (thus disclosing portions of her forehead and temples which I had not yet seen), and wrap her up so completely in the green shawl that nothing was left visible but the tip of her nose. Indeed, I could see that, if her little rosy fingers had not made a small, opening near her mouth, she would have been unable to breathe. Finally I saw her leave her mother's arm for an instant on the staircase, and turn and nod to us quickly before she disappeared through the doorway.
Woloda, the Iwins, the young Prince Etienne, and myself were all of us in love with Sonetchka and all of us standing on the staircase to follow her with our eyes.
To whom in particular she had nodded I do not know, but at the moment I firmly believed it to be myself.
In taking leave of the Iwins, I spoke quite unconcernedly, and even coldly, to Seriosha before I finally shook hands with him.
Though he tried to appear absolutely indifferent, I think that he understood that from that day forth he had lost both my affection and his power over me, as well as that he regretted it.
XXIV— IN BED
"How could I have managed to be so long and so passionately devoted to Seriosha?" I asked myself as I lay in bed that night.
"He never either understood, appreciated, or deserved my love. But Sonetchka! What a darling SHE is! 'Wilt THOU?'—'THY hand'!"
I crept closer to the pillows, imagined to myself her lovely face, covered my head over with the bedclothes, tucked the counterpane in on all sides, and, thus snugly covered, lay quiet and enjoying the warmth until I became wholly absorbed in pleasant fancies and reminiscences.
If I stared fixedly at the inside of the sheet above me I found that I could see her as clearly as I had done an hour ago could talk to her in my thoughts, and, though it was a conversation of irrational tenor, I derived the greatest delight from it, seeing that "THOU" and "THINE" and "for THEE" and "to THEE" occurred in it incessantly.
These fancies were so vivid that I could not sleep for the sweetness of my emotion, and felt as though I must communicate my superabundant happiness to some one.
"The darling!" I said, half–aloud, as I turned over; then,
"Woloda, are you asleep?"
"No," he replied in a sleepy voice. "What's the matter?"
"I am in love, Woloda—terribly in love with Sonetchka"
"Well? Anything else?" he replied, stretching himself.
"Oh, but you cannot imagine what I feel just now, as I lay covered over with the counterpane, I could see her and talk to her so clearly that it was marvellous!
And, do you know, while I was lying thinking about her—I don't know why it was, but all at once I felt so sad that I could have cried."
Woloda made a movement of some sort.
"One thing only I wish for," I continued; "and that is that I could always be with her and always be seeing her. Just that.
You are in love too, I believe. Confess that you are."
It was strange, but somehow I wanted every one to be in love with Sonetchka, and every one to tell me that they were so.
"So that's how it is with you?" said Woloda, turning round to me. "Well, I can understand it."
"I can see that you cannot sleep," I remarked, observing by his bright eyes that he was anything but drowsy. "Well, cover yourself over SO" (and I pulled the bedclothes over him), "and then let us talk about her.
Isn't she splendid? If she were to say to me,
'Nicolinka, jump out of the window,' or 'jump into the fire,' I should say, 'Yes, I will do it at once and rejoice in doing it.'
Oh, how glorious she is!" I went on picturing her again and again to my imagination, and, to enjoy the vision the better, turned over on my side and buried my head in the pillows, murmuring,
"Oh, I want to cry, Woloda."
"What a fool you are!" he said with a slight laugh. Then, after a moment's silence he added: "I am not like you. I think I would rather sit and talk with her."
"Ah! Then you ARE in love with her!" I interrupted.
"And then," went on Woloda, smiling tenderly, "kiss her fingers and eyes and lips and nose and feet—kiss all of her."
"How absurd!" I exclaimed from beneath the pillows.
"Ah, you don't understand things," said Woloda with contempt.
"I DO understand. It's you who don't understand things, and you talk rubbish, too," I replied, half–crying.
"Well, there is nothing to cry about," he concluded.
"She is only a girl."