But Aglaya suddenly seemed to make an effort and at once gained control of herself.

"You misunderstand me," she said. "I haven't come ... to quarrel with you, though I don't like you. I . . . I've come to you . . . for a human talk. When I summoned you, I had already decided what I was going to speak about, and I will not go back on my decision, though you may misunderstand me completely. That will be the worse for you, not for me. I wanted to reply to what you wrote to me, and to reply in person, because it seemed more convenient to me. Listen, then, to my reply to all your letters: I felt sorry for Prince Lev Nikolaevich for the first time the very day I made his acquaintance and later when I learned about all that had happened at your party. I felt sorry for him because he is such a simple-hearted man and in his simplicity believed that he could be happy . . . with a woman ... of such character. What I feared for him was just what happened: you could not love him, you tormented him and abandoned him. You could not love him because you are too proud . . . no, not proud, I'm mistaken, but because you are vain . . . and not even that: you are selfish to the point of madness, of which your letters to me also serve as proof. You could not love him, simple as he is, and may even have despised him and laughed at him to yourself; you could love only your own disgrace and the incessant thought that you had been disgraced and offended. If you had had less disgrace or none at all, you would have been unhappier . . ." (It was a pleasure for Aglaya to articulate these words, so hurriedly leaping out, yet long prepared and pondered, already pondered when today's meeting could not even have been pictured in a dream; with a venomous gaze she followed their effect in Nastasya Filippovna's face, distorted with emotion.) "You remember," she went on, "he wrote me a letter then; he says you know about the letter and have even read it? I understood everything from that letter and understood it correctly; he recently confirmed it to me himself, that is, everything I'm telling you now, even word for word. After the letter I began to wait. I guessed that you'd have to come here, because you really can't do without Petersburg: you're still too young and good-looking for the provinces . . . However, those are also not my words," she added, blushing terribly, and from that moment on the color never left her face to the very end of her speech. "When I saw the prince

again, I felt terribly pained and offended for him. Don't laugh; if you laugh, you're not worthy of understanding it . . ."

"You can see that I'm not laughing," Nastasya Filippovna said sadly and sternly.

"However, it's all the same to me, laugh as much as you like. When I asked him myself, he told me that he had stopped loving you long ago, that even the memory of you was painful for him, but that he pitied you, and that when he remembered you, his heart felt 'pierced forever.' I must tell you, too, that I have never met a single person in my life who is equal to him in noble simple-heartedness and infinite trustfulness. I guessed after what he said that anyone who wanted to could deceive him, and whoever deceived him he would forgive afterwards, and it was for that that I loved him . . ."

Aglaya stopped for a moment, as if struck, as if not believing herself that she could utter such a word; but at the same moment an almost boundless pride flashed in her eyes; it seemed that it was now all the same for her, even if "that woman" should laugh now at the confession that had escaped her.

"I've told you everything, and, of course, you've now understood what I want from you?"

"Perhaps I have; but say it yourself," Nastasya Filippovna replied quietly.

Wrath lit up in Aglaya's face.

"I wanted to find out from you," she said firmly and distinctly, "by what right do you interfere in his feelings towards me? By what right do you dare write letters to me? By what right do you declare every minute to me and to him that you love him, after you yourself abandoned him and ran away from him in such an offensive and . . . disgraceful way?"

"I have never declared either to him or to you that I love him," Nastasya Filippovna spoke with effort, "and . . . you're right, I ran away from him . . ." she added barely audibly.

"What do you mean you 'never declared either to him or to me'?" cried Aglaya. "And what about your letters? Who asked you to matchmake us and persuade me to marry him? Isn't that a declaration? Why do you force yourself on us? At first I thought you wanted, on the contrary, to make me loathe him by meddling with us, so that I would abandon him, and only later did I guess what it was: you simply imagined that you were doing a lofty deed with all this posturing . . . Well, how could you love him, if you

love your vanity so much? Why didn't you simply go away, instead of writing ridiculous letters to me? Why don't you now marry the noble man who loves you so much and has honored you by offering his hand? It's all too clear why: if you marry Rogozhin, what sort of offense will you have left then? You'll even get too much honor! Evgeny Pavlych said of you that you've read too many poems and are 'too well educated for your . . . position'; that you're a bookish woman and a lily-white; add your vanity, and there are all your reasons . . ."

"And you're not a lily-white?"

The matter had arrived too hastily, too nakedly at such an unexpected point, unexpected because Nastasya Filippovna, on her way to Pavlovsk, had still been dreaming of something, though, of course, she anticipated it would sooner be bad than good; as for Aglaya, she was decidedly carried along by the impulse of the moment, as if falling down a hill, and could not resist the terrible pleasure of revenge. For Nastasya Filippovna it was even strange to see Aglaya like this; she looked at her and could not believe her eyes, and was decidedly at a loss for the first moment. Whether she was a woman who had read too many poems, as Evgeny Pavlovich suggested, or was simply a madwoman, as the prince was convinced, in any case this woman—who on occasion had so cynical and brazen a manner—was in reality far more shy, tender, and trustful than one might have thought. True, there was much in her that was bookish, dreamy, self-enclosed, and fantastical, but much, too, that was strong and deep . . . The prince understood that; suffering showed in his face. Aglaya noticed it and trembled with hatred.

"How dare you address me like that?" she said with inexpressible haughtiness, in reply to Nastasya Filippovna's remark.

"You probably misheard me," Nastasya Filippovna was surprised. "How did I address you?"

"If you wanted to be an honest woman, why didn't you drop your seducer Totsky then, simply . . . without theatrics?" Aglaya said suddenly out of the blue.

"What do you know about my position, that you dare to judge me?" Nastasya Filippovna gave a start and turned terribly pale.

"I know that you didn't go to work, but went off with the rich Rogozhin, in order to present yourself as a fallen angel. I'm not surprised that Totsky wanted to shoot himself because of a fallen angel!"

"Stop it!" Nastasya Filippovna said with repugnance and as if through pain. "You understand me as well as . . . Darya Alexeevna's chambermaid, who went to the justice of the peace the other day to make a complaint against her fiancé. She'd have understood better than you . . ."

"She's probably an honest girl and lives by her own labor. Why do you have such contempt for a chambermaid?"