That's not what I want.... You know all that."
"No, I never could tell what you want. It seems to me that you're interested in me, as some veteran nurses get specially interested in some particular invalid in comparison with the others, or still more, like some pious old women who frequent funerals and find one corpse more attractive than another.
Why do you look at me so strangely?"
"Are you very ill?" she asked sympathetically, looking at him in a peculiar way.
"Good heavens!
And this man wants to do without me!"
"Listen, Dasha, now I'm always seeing phantoms.
One devil offered me yesterday, on the bridge, to murder Lebyadkin and Marya Timofyevna, to settle the marriage difficulty, and to cover up all traces.
He asked me to give him three roubles on account, but gave me to understand that the whole operation wouldn't cost less than fifteen hundred.
Wasn't he a calculating devil!
A regular shopkeeper.
Ha ha!"
"But you're fully convinced that it was an hallucination?"
"Oh, no; not a bit an hallucination!
It was simply Fedka the convict, the robber who escaped from prison.
But that's not the point. What do you suppose I did!
I gave him all I had, everything in my purse, and now he's sure I've given him that on account!"
"You met him at night, and he made such a suggestion?
Surely you must see that you're being caught in their nets on every side!"
"Well, let them be.
But you've got some question at the tip of your tongue, you know. I see it by your eyes," he added with a resentful and irritable smile.
Dasha was frightened.
"I've no question at all, and no doubt whatever; you'd better be quiet!" she cried in dismay, as though waving off his question.
"Then you're convinced that I won't go to Fedka's little shop?"
"Oh, God!" she cried, clasping her hands. "Why do you torture me like this?"
"Oh, forgive me my stupid joke. I must be picking up bad manners from them.
Do you know, ever since last night I feel awfully inclined to laugh, to go on laughing continually forever so long.
It's as though I must explode with laughter. It's like an illness....
Oh! my mother's coming in. I always know by the rumble when her carriage has stopped at the entrance."
Dasha seized his hand.
"God save you from your demon, and... call me, call me quickly!"
"Oh! a fine demon!
It's simply a little nasty, scrofulous imp, with a cold in his head, one of the unsuccessful ones.
But you have something you don't dare to say again, Dasha?"
She looked at him with pain and reproach, and turned towards the door.
"Listen," he called after her, with a malignant and distorted smile.
"If... Yes, if, in one word, if... you understand, even if I did go to that little shop, and if I called you after that—would you come then?"
She went out, hiding her face in her hands, and neither turning nor answering.
"She will come even after the shop," he whispered, thinking a moment, and an expression of scornful disdain came into his face. "A nurse!
H'm!... but perhaps that's what I want."
CHAPTER IV. ALL IN EXPECTATION
The impression made on the whole neighbourhood by the story of the duel, which was rapidly noised abroad, was particularly remarkable from the unanimity with which every one hastened to take up the cudgels for Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch.
Many of his former enemies declared themselves his friends.
The chief reason for this change of front in public opinion was chiefly due to one person, who had hitherto not expressed her opinion, but who now very distinctly uttered a few words, which at once gave the event a significance exceedingly interesting to the vast majority.
This was how it happened. On the day after the duel, all the town was assembled at the Marshal of Nobility's in honour of his wife's nameday.
Yulia Mihailovna was present, or, rather, presided, accompanied by Lizaveta Nikolaevna, radiant with beauty and peculiar gaiety, which struck many of our ladies at once as particularly suspicious at this time.
And I may mention, by the way, her engagement to Mavriky Nikolaevitch was by now an established fact.
To a playful question from a retired general of much consequence, of whom we shall have more to say later, Lizaveta Nikolaevna frankly replied that evening that she was engaged.
And only imagine, not one of our ladies would believe in her engagement.
They all persisted in assuming a romance of some sort, some fatal family secret, something that had happened in Switzerland, and for some reason imagined that Yulia Mihailovna must have had some hand in it.