And what was it: love or madness?"
All day long she wandered about the flower-garden and the orchard.
The anxiety growing in her from minute to minute made her restless.
And all her thoughts were riveted on the unknown man whom she had never seen, and would hardly ever see — that ridiculous "P.P.Z."
"Who knows? Perhaps a real, self-sacrificing, true love has crossed the path of your life," she recalled what Anosov had said.
At six o'clock the postman came.
This time Vera Nikolayevna recognized Zheltkov's handwriting, and she unfolded the letter with greater tenderness than she would have expected of herself.
This was what Zheltkov wrote:
"It is not my fault, Vera Nikolayevna, that God willed to send to me, as an enormous happiness, love for you.
I happen not to be interested in anything like politics, science, philosophy, or man's future happiness; to me life is centred in you alone.
Now I realize that I have thrust myself into your life like an embarrassing wedge.
Please forgive me for that if you can.
I am leaving today and shall never come back, and there will be nothing to remind you of me.
"I am immensely grateful to you just because you exist.
I have examined myself, and I know it is not a disease, not the obsession of a maniac — it is love with which God has chosen to reward me for some reason.
"I may have appeared ridiculous to you and your brother, Nikolai Nikolayevich.
As I depart I say in ecstasy,
'Hallowed be thy name. '
"Eight years ago I saw you in a circus box, and from the very first second I said to myself: I love her because there is nothing on earth like her, nothing better, no animal, no plant, no star, because no human being is more beautiful than she, or more delicate.
The whole beauty of the earth seemed to be embodied in you.
"What was I to do?
Fly to some other town?
But my heart was always beside you, at your feet, at every moment it was filled with you, with thoughts of you, with dreams of you, with a sweet madness.
I am very much ashamed of, and blush in my mind for, that foolish bracelet — well, it cannot be helped; it was a mistake.
I can imagine the impression it made on your guests.
"I shall be gone in ten minutes from now. I shall just have time to stick a postage stamp on this letter and drop it into a box, so as not to ask anyone else to do it.
Please burn this letter.
I have just heated the stove and am burning all that was precious to me in life: your handkerchief which, I confess, I stole.
You left it on a chair at a ball in the Noblemen's Assembly.
Your note — oh, how I kissed it! — in which you forbade me to write to you.
A programme of an art exhibition, which you once, held in your hand and left forgotten on a chair by the entrance.
It is finished.
I have cut off everything, but still I believe, and even feel confident, that you will think of me.
If you do — I know you are very musical, for I saw you mostly at performances of the Beethoven quartets — if you do think of me, please play, or get someone else to play, the Sonata in D-dur No. 2, op.
2.
"I wonder how I shall close my letter.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart because you have been my only joy in life, my only comfort, my sole thought.
May God give you happiness, and may nothing transient or commonplace disturb your wonderful soul.
I kiss your hands.
G.S.Z.
She went to her husband, her eyes red with crying and her lips swollen, and, showing him the letter, she said,
"I don't want to conceal anything from you, but I have a feeling that something terrible has come into our life.
You and Nikolai Nikolayevich probably didn't handle the matter properly."
Prince Sheyin read the letter with deep attention, folded it carefully, and said after a long pause,
"I don't doubt this man's sincerity, and what's more, I don't think I have a right to analyse his feelings towards you."
"Is he dead?" asked Vera.
"Yes, he's dead. I think he loved you and wasn't mad at all.
I watched him all the time and saw his every movement, every change in his face.
There was no life for him without you.
I felt as if I were witnessing a tremendous agony, and I almost realized that I was dealing with a dead man.