“Why do you write what isn’t true?”
“Why, here, read it. You see this book; you’ve looked at it already.
You can read, can’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’ll see then.
I wrote this book.”
“You? I’ll read it .... ”
She was evidently longing to say something, but found it difficult, and was in great excitement.
Something lay hidden under her questions.
“And are you paid much for this?” she asked at last.
“It’s as it happens.
Sometimes a lot, sometimes nothing, because the work doesn’t come off.
It’s difficult work, Lenotchka.”
“Then you’re not rich?”
“No, not rich.”
“Then I shall work and help you.”
She glanced at me quickly, flushed, dropped her eyes, and taking two steps towards me suddenly threw her arms round me, and pressed her face tightly against my breast; I looked at her with amazement.
“I love you ... I’m not proud,” she said.
“You said I was proud yesterday.
No, no, I’m not like that. I love you.
You are the only person who cares for me. . . .”
But her tears choked her.
A minute later they burst out with as much violence as the day before.
She fell on her knees before me, kissed my hands, my feet....
“You care for me!” she repeated. “You’re the only one, the only one.”
She embraced my knees convulsively.
All the feeling which she had repressed for so long broke out at once, in an uncon. trollable outburst, and I understood the strange stubbornness of a heart that for a while shrinkingly masked its feeling, the more harshly, the more stubbornly as the need for expression and utterance grew stronger, till the inevitable outburst came, when the whole being forgot itself and gave itself up to the craving for love, to gratitude, to affection and to tears.
She sobbed till she became hysterical.
With an effort I loosened her arms, lifted her up and carried her to the sofa.
For a long time she went on sobbing, hiding her face in the pillow as though ashamed to look at me. But she held my hand tight, and kept it pressed to her heart.
By degrees she grew calmer, but still did not raise her face to me.
Twice her eyes flitted over my face, and there was a great softness and a sort of timorous and shrinking emotion in them.
At last she flushed and smiled.
“Are you better?” I asked, “my sensitive little Lenotchka, my sick little child!”
“Not Lenotchka, no...” she whispered, still hiding her face from me.
“Not Lenotchka?
What then?”
“Nellie.”
“Nellie?
Why must it be Nellie?
If you like; it’s a very pretty name.
I’ll call you so if that’s what you wish.”
“That’s what mother called me. And no one else ever called me that, no one but she.... And I would not have anyone call me so but mother. But you call me so. I want you to. I will always love you, always.”
“A loving and proud little heart,” I thought. “And how long it has taken me to win the right to call you Nellie!”
But now I knew her heart was gained for ever.
“Nellie, listen,” I said, as soon as she was calmer.
“You say that no one has ever loved you but your mother.
Is it true your grandfather didn’t love you?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Yet you cried for him; do you remember, here, on the stairs?” For a minute she did not speak.