Aglaya did not begin a conversation, but only studied her interlocutor intently.
He also kept glancing at her, but at times it was as if he did not see her before him at all.
She was beginning to blush.
"Ah, yes!" the prince gave a start. "Ippolit shot himself!"
"When?
At your place?" she said, but with no great surprise. "Yesterday evening, I believe, he was still alive?
How could you fall asleep here after all that?" she cried with unexpected animation.
"But he didn't die, the pistol didn't fire."
At Aglaya's insistence the prince had to retell right then, and even in great detail, the whole story of the past night.
She kept hurrying him as he told it, yet she herself interrupted him continually with questions, almost all of them beside the point.
Among other things, she listened with great curiosity to what Evgeny Pavlovich had said, and several times even asked the prince to repeat it.
"Well, enough, we must hurry," she concluded, having heard it all, "we can only stay here for an hour, till eight o'clock, because at eight o'clock I must be at home without fail, so they won't know I've been sitting here, and I've come on business; I have a lot to tell you.
Only you've got me all thrown off now.
About Ippolit, I think his pistol was bound not to fire, it's more suited to him.
But are you sure he really wanted to shoot himself and there was no deception in it?"
"No deception at all."
"That's more likely, too.
So he wrote that you should bring me his confession?
Why didn't you bring it?"
"But he didn't die.
I'll ask him."
"Bring it without fail, and there's no need to ask.
He'll probably be very pleased, because it may be that his purpose in shooting himself was so that I should read his confession afterwards.
Please, Lev Nikolaich, I beg you not to laugh at my words, because it may very well be so."
"I'm not laughing, because I'm sure myself that in part it may very well be so."
"You're sure?
Do you really think so, too?" Aglaya suddenly became terribly surprised.
She questioned him quickly, spoke rapidly, but seemed to get confused at times and often did not finish; she kept hurrying to warn him about something; generally she was extraordinarily anxious, and though she looked at him very bravely and with a sort of defiance, she was perhaps also a little frightened.
She was wearing a most ordinary and simple dress, which was very becoming to her.
She often started, blushed, and sat on the edge of the bench.
She was very surprised when the prince agreed that Ippolit shot himself so that she should read his confession.
"Of course," the prince explained, "he wanted not only you but the rest of us also to praise him ..."
"How do you mean, praise him?"
"I mean it's . . . how shall I tell you?
It's very hard to say.
Only he surely wanted everyone to stand around him and tell him that they love and respect him very much, and start begging him to remain alive.
It may well be that he had you in mind most of all, since he mentioned you at such a moment . . . though he may not have known himself that he had you in mind."
"That I don't understand at all: had me in mind, but didn't know he had me in mind.
Though I think I do understand: do you know that I myself, even when I was still a thirteen-year-old girl, thought at least thirty times of poisoning myself, and of writing all about it in a letter to my parents, and I also thought of how I would lie in the coffin, and they would all weep over me and accuse themselves for being so cruel to me . . . Why are you smiling again?" she added quickly, frowning. "And what do you think to yourself when you dream alone?
Maybe you imagine you're a field marshal and have crushed Napoleon?" "Well, on my word of honor, that's just what I do think about, especially as I'm falling asleep," laughed the prince, "only it's not Napoleon I crush but the Austrians."
"I have no wish to joke with you, Lev Nikolaich.
I will go to see Ippolit myself; I ask you to warn him.
And on your side I find all this very bad, because it's very rude to look at and judge a man's soul the way you're judging Ippolit.
You have no tenderness, only truth, that makes it unfair."
The prince reflected.
"I think you're being unfair to me," he said. "I don't find anything bad in his thinking that way, because everyone is inclined to think that way; besides, maybe he didn't think at all, but merely wanted ... he wanted to meet people for the last time, to deserve their respect and love; those are very good feelings, only somehow nothing turned out right; it's his sickness, and something else as well!
Anyhow, with some people everything always turns out right, and with others it's like nothing in the world . . ."
"You probably added that about yourself," Aglaya observed.
"Yes, about myself," replied the prince, not noticing any malice in the question.
"Only, all the same, I should never have fallen asleep in your place; it means that wherever you snuggle up, you fall asleep at once; that's not very nice on your part."