And if I marry you,' she added, 'I'll be your faithful wife, don't doubt it and don't worry.'
She was silent a minute, then said: 'You're not a lackey after all. Before I used to think you were as complete a lackey as they come.'
Then she set a date for the wedding, and a week later she ran away from me here to Lebedev.
When I arrived, she said:
'I don't reject you altogether; I only want to wait a little more, as long as I like, because I'm still my own mistress.
You wait, too, if you want.'
That's how we are now . . . What do you think of all that, Lev Nikolaevich?"
"What do you think yourself?" the prince asked back, looking sadly at Rogozhin.
"As if I think!" escaped him.
He was going to add something, but kept silent in inconsolable anguish.
The prince stood up and was again about to leave.
"All the same I won't hinder you," he said quietly, almost pensively, as if responding to some inner, hidden thought of his own.
"You know what I'll tell you?" Rogozhin suddenly became animated and his eyes flashed. "How can you give her up to me like that? I don't understand.
Have you stopped loving her altogether?
Before you were in anguish anyway; I could see that.
So why have you come galloping here headlong?
Out of pity?" (And his face twisted in spiteful mockery.) "Heh, heh!"
"Do you think I'm deceiving you?" asked the prince.
"No, I believe you, only I don't understand any of it.
The surest thing of all is that your pity is maybe still worse than my love!"
Something spiteful lit up in his face, wanting to speak itself out at once.
"Well, your love is indistinguishable from spite," smiled the prince, "and when it passes, there may be still worse trouble.
This I tell you, brother Parfyon ..."
"That I'll put a knife in her?"
The prince gave a start.
"You'll hate her very much for this present love, for all this torment that you're suffering now.
For me the strangest thing is how she could again decide to marry you.
When I heard it yesterday—I could scarcely believe it, and it pained me so.
She has already renounced you twice and run away from the altar, which means she has a foreboding! . . .
What does she want with you now?
Can it be your money?
That's nonsense.
And you must have spent quite a bit of it by now.
Can it be only to have a husband?
She could find someone besides you.
Anyone would be better than you, because you may put a knife in her, and maybe she knows that only too well now.
Because you love her so much?
True, that could be . . . I've heard there are women who seek precisely that kind of love . . . only ..."
The prince paused and pondered.
"Why did you smile again at my father's portrait?" asked Rogozhin, who was observing very closely every change, every fleeting expression of his face.
"Why did I smile?
It occurred to me that, if it hadn't been for this calamity, if this love hadn't befallen you, you might have become exactly like your father, and in a very short time at that.
Lodged silently alone in this house with your obedient and uncomplaining wife, speaking rarely and sternly, trusting no one, and having no need at all for that, but only making money silently and sullenly.
At most you'd occasionally praise some old books or get interested in the two-fingered sign of the cross,18 and that probably only in old age ..."
"Go on, jeer.
And she said exactly the same thing not long ago, when she was looking at that portrait!
Funny how the two of you agree in everything now . . ."
"So she's already been at your place?" the prince asked with curiosity.
"She has.
She looked at the portrait for a long time, asked questions about the deceased.