And you, Parfyon Semyonovich, will be served tea here without me, you must have gotten hungry today.'
She came back from the theater alone: 'They're little cowards and scoundrels,' she says, 'they're afraid of you, and they try to frighten me: he won't leave you like that, he may put a knife in you.
But I'm going to my bedroom and I won't lock the door: that's how afraid of you I am!
So that you know it and see it!
Did you have tea?'
'No,' I say, 'and I won't.'
'You had the honor of being offered, but this doesn't suit you at all.'
And she did what she said, she didn't lock her bedroom.
In the morning she came out—laughing.
'Have you gone crazy, or what?' she says.
'You'll starve to death like this.'
'Forgive me,' I say.
'I don't want to forgive you, and I won't marry you, you've been told. Did you really spend the whole night sitting in that chair, you didn't sleep?'
'No,' I say, 'I didn't sleep.'
'Such a clever one!
And you won't have tea and won't eat dinner again?'
'I told you I won't—forgive me!'
'This really doesn't suit you,' she says, 'if only you knew, it's like a saddle on a cow.
You're not trying to frighten me, are you?
A lot I care if you go hungry; I'm not afraid!'
She got angry, but not for long; she began nagging me again.
And I marveled at her then, that she felt no spite towards me.
Because she does remember evil, with others she remembers evil a long time!
Then it occurred to me that she considered me so low that she couldn't even be very angry with me.
And that's the truth.
'Do you know,' she says, 'what the pope of Rome is?'
'I've heard of him,' I say.
'Parfyon Semyonych,' she says, 'you never studied world history.'
'I never studied anything,' I say.
'Here, then,' she says, 'I'll give you something to read: there was this one pope who got angry with some emperor, and this emperor spent three days without eating or drinking, barefoot, on his knees, in front of his palace, until the pope forgave him; what do you think this emperor thought to himself for those three days, standing on his knees, and what kind of vows did he make? . . .
Wait,' she says, 'I'll read it to you myself!'
She jumped up, brought a book: 'It's poetry,' she says, and begins reading verses to me about this emperor swearing to take revenge on this pope during those three days.17
'Can it be,' she says, 'that you don't like it, Parfyon Semyonych?'
'That's all true,' I say, 'what you read.'
'Aha, you yourself say it's true, that means you, too, may be making vows that "if she marries me, then I'll remember everything she's done, then I'll have fun at her expense!" '
'I don't know,' I say, 'maybe that's what I'm thinking.'
'How is it you don't know?'
'I just don't,' I say, 'that's not what I'm thinking about now.'
'And what are you thinking about now?'
'About how you get up from your place, go past me, and I look at you and watch you; your dress rustles, and my heart sinks, and if you leave the room, I remember every little word you've said, and in what voice, and what it was; and this whole night I wasn't thinking about anything, but I kept listening to how you breathed in your sleep, and how you stirred a couple of times ...'
'And perhaps,' she laughed, 'you don't think about or remember how you beat me?'
And maybe I do,' I say, 'I don't know.'
'But what if I don't forgive you and don't marry you?'
'I told you, I'll drown myself.'
'Perhaps you'll still kill me before that. . .' She said it and fell to thinking.
Then she got angry and left.
An hour later she comes out to me so gloomy.
'I'll marry you, Parfyon Semyonovich,' she says, 'and not because I'm afraid of you, but because I'll perish all the same.
And which way is better, eh?
Sit down,' she says, 'dinner will be served now.