When you told me about taking that room I noticed it in you.
So the room’s damp, not nice?”
“Yes, I had an adventure there this evening.... But I’ll tell you about it afterwards.”
She had left off listening and was sitting plunged in deep thought.
“I don’t know how I could have left them then. I was in a fever,” she added at last, looking at me with an expression that did not seem to expect an answer.
If I had spoken to her at that moment she would not have heard me.
“Vanya,” she said in a voice hardly audible, “I asked you to come for a reason.”
“What is it?”
“I am parting from him.”
“You have parted, or you’re going to part?”
“I must put an end to this life.
I asked you to come that I might tell you everything, all, all that has been accumulating, and that I’ve hidden from you till now.”
This was always how she began, confiding to me her secret intentions, and it almost always turned out that I had learnt the whole secret from her long before.
“Ach, Natasha, I’ve heard that from you a thousand times, Of course it’s impossible for you to go on living together. Your relation is such a strange one. You have nothing in common.
But will you have the strength ? ”
“It’s only been an idea before, Vanya, but now I have quite made up my mind.
I love him beyond everything, and yet it seems I am his worst enemy. I shall ruin his future.
I must set him free.
He can’t marry me; he hasn’t the strength to go against his father.
I don’t want to bind him either.
And so I’m really glad he has fallen in love with the girl they are betrothing him to.
It will make the parting easier for him.
I ought to do it!
It’s my duty. . . If I love him I ought to sacrifice everything for him. I ought to prove my love for him; it’s my duty!
Isn’t it?”
“But you won’t persuade him, you know”
“I’m not going to persuade him.
I shall be just the same with him if he comes in this minute.
But I must find some means to make it easier for him to leave me without a conscienceprick.
That’s what worries me, Vanya. Help me.
Can’t you advise something?”
“There is only one way,” I said: “to leave off loving him altogether and fall in love with someone else.
But I doubt whether even that will do it; surely you know his character.
Here he’s not been to see you for five days.
Suppose he had left you altogether. You’ve only to write that you are leaving him, and he’d run to you at once.”
“Why do you dislike him, Vanya?”
“I?”
“Yes, you, you!
You’re his enemy, secret and open.
You can’t speak of him without vindictiveness.
I’ve noticed a thousand times that it’s your greatest pleasure to humiliate him and blacken him!
Yes, blacken him, it’s the truth!”
“And you’ve told me so a thousand times already.
Enough, Natasha, let’s drop this conversation.”
“I’ve been wanting to move into another lodging,” she began again after a silence.
“Don’t be angry, Vanya.”
“Why, he’d come to another lodging, and I assure you I’m not angry.”
“Love, a new strong love, might hold him back.
If he came back to me it would only be for a moment, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know, Natasha. Everything with him is so inconsistent. He wants to marry that girl, and to love you, too.