Now he had everything to make life happy... but he could not go on living, he could not; oh, damnation!
"O God! restore to life the man I knocked down at the fence!
Let this fearful cup pass from me!
Lord, thou hast wrought miracles for such sinners as me!
But what, what if the old man's alive?
Oh, then the shame of the other disgrace I would wipe away. I would restore the stolen money. I'd give it back; I'd get it somehow.... No trace of that shame will remain except in my heart for ever!
But no, no; oh, impossible cowardly dreams!
Oh, damnation!"
Yet there was a ray of light and hope in his darkness.
He jumped up and ran back to the room- to her, to her, his queen for ever!
Was not one moment of her love worth all the rest of life, even in the agonies of disgrace?
This wild question clutched at his heart.
"To her, to her alone, to see her, to hear her, to think of nothing, to forget everything, if only for that night, for an hour, for a moment!"
Just as he turned from the balcony into the passage, he came upon the landlord, Trifon Borissovitch.
He thought he looked gloomy and worried, and fancied he had come to find him.
"What is it, Trifon Borissovitch? Are you looking for me?"
"No, sir," The landlord seemed disconcerted. "Why should I be looking for you?
Where have you been?"
"Why do you look so glum?
You're not angry, are you?
Wait a bit, you shall soon get to bed.... What's the time?"
"It'll be three o'clock.
Past three, it must be."
"We'll leave off soon. We'll leave off."
"Don't mention it; it doesn't matter.
Keep it up as long as you like..."
"What's the matter with him?" Mitya wondered for an instant, and he ran back to the room where the girls were dancing.
But she was not there.
She was not in the blue room either; there was no one but Kalgonov asleep on the sofa.
Mitya peeped behind the curtain- she was there.
She was sitting in the corner, on a trunk. Bent forward, with her head and arms on the bed close by, she was crying bitterly, doing her utmost to stifle her sobs that she might not be heard.
Seeing Mitya, she beckoned him to her, and when he ran to her, she grasped his hand tightly.
"Mitya, Mitya, I loved him, you know. How I have loved him these five years, all that time!
Did I love him or only my own anger?
No, him, him!
It's a lie that it was my anger I loved and not him.
Mitya, I was only seventeen then; he was so kind to me, so merry; he used to sing to me.... Or so it seemed to a silly girl like me.... And now, O Lord, it's not the same man.
Even his face is not the same; he's different altogether.
I shouldn't have known him.
I drove here with Timofey, and all the way I was thinking how I should meet him, what I should say to him, how we should look at one another.
My soul was faint, and all of a sudden it was just as though he had emptied a pail of dirty water over me.
He talked to me like a schoolmaster, all so grave and learned; he met me so solemnly that I was struck dumb.
I couldn't get a word in.
At first I thought he was ashamed to talk before his great big Pole.
I sat staring at him and wondering why I couldn't say a word to him now.
It must have been his wife that ruined him; you know he threw me up to get married. She must have changed him like that.
Mitya, how shameful it is!
Oh, Mitya, I'm ashamed, I'm ashamed for all my life.
Curse it, curse it, curse those five years!" And again she burst into tears, but clung tight to Mitya's hand and did not let it go.
"Mitya, darling, stay, don't go away. I want to say one word to you," she whispered, and suddenly raised her face to him. "Listen, tell me who it is I love?