Did she respond in any way?"
"Yes, of course."
"Speak then, speak—ah, the devil! . . ."
And Ganya stamped his right foot, shod in a galosh, twice on the sidewalk.
"As soon as I finished reading it, she told me that you were trying to trap her; that you wished to compromise her, in order to obtain some hope from her and then, on the basis of that hope, to break without losses from the other hope for a hundred thousand.
That if you had done it without negotiating with her, had broken it off by yourself without asking her for a guarantee beforehand, she might perhaps have become your friend.
That's all, I think.
Ah, one more thing: when I had already taken the note and asked what the reply would be, she said that no reply would be the best reply—I think that was it; forgive me if I've forgotten her exact expression, but I'm conveying it as I understood it myself."
Boundless spite came over Ganya, and his rage exploded without restraint.
"Ahh!
So that's how it is!" he rasped. "She throws my notes out the window!
Ahh!
She doesn't negotiate—then I will!
We'll see!
There's a lot about me ... we'll see!...
I'll tie them in little knots!..."
He grimaced, turned pale, frothed, shook his fist.
They went a few steps like that.
He was not embarrassed in the least by the prince's presence, as if he were alone in his room, because he regarded him as nothing in the highest degree.
But he suddenly realized something and came to his senses.
"How did it happen," he suddenly turned to the prince, "how did it happen that you"—"an idiot!" he added to himself—"have suddenly been taken into such confidence, after being acquainted for two hours?
How is it?"
With all his torments he only lacked envy.
It suddenly stung him to the very heart.
"I'm unable to explain it to you," replied the prince.
Ganya looked at him spitefully:
"Was it her confidence she wanted to give you when she called you to the dining room?
Wasn't she going to give you something?"
"I can't understand it in any other way than precisely that."
"But why, devil take it!
What did you do there?
What was it they liked?
Listen," he was fussing with all his might (just then everything in him was somehow scattered and seething in disorder, so that he was unable to collect his thoughts), "listen, can't you somehow recall and put in order precisely what you were talking about, all the words, from the very beginning?
Didn't you notice anything, can't you recall?"
"Oh, I recall very well," the prince replied. "From the very beginning, when I went in and was introduced, we started talking about Switzerland."
"Well, to hell with Switzerland!"
"Then about capital punishment ..."
"About capital punishment?"
"Yes, apropos of something . . . then I told them how I'd lived there for three years, and also the story of a poor village girl . . ."
"To hell with the poor village girl!
Go on!" Ganya tore ahead impatiently.
"Then how Schneider gave me his opinion of my character and urged me ..."
"Blast Schneider and spit on his opinion! Go on!"
"Then, apropos of something, I started talking about faces— that is, about facial expressions, and I said that Aglaya Ivanovna was almost as good-looking as Nastasya Filippovna.
It was here that I let slip about the portrait ..."
"But you didn't repeat, you surely didn't repeat everything you'd heard earlier in the office?
Did you?
Did you?"
"I tell you again that I didn't."
"Then how the devil . . . Bah!