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At last I succeeded in seizing a favourable opportunity.

‘You are alone again,’ Varia whispered to me.

‘Yes,’ I answered gloomily; ‘and probably for long.’

She swiftly drew in her head.

‘Did you give him my letter?’ she asked in a voice hardly audible.

‘Yes.’

‘Well?’… she gasped for breath. I glanced at her…. There was a sudden flash of spiteful pleasure within me.

‘He told me to tell you,’ I pronounced deliberately, ‘that “what has been will not be again….”‘

Varia pressed her left hand to her heart, stretched her right hand out in front, staggered, and went quickly out of the room. I tried to overtake her…. Ivan Semyonitch stopped me. I stayed another two hours with him, but Varia did not appear. On the way back I felt ashamed … ashamed before Varia, before Andrei, before myself; though they say it is better to cut off an injured limb at once than to keep the patient in prolonged suffering; but who gave me a right to deal such a merciless blow at the heart of a poor girl?… For a long while I could not sleep … but I fell asleep at last. In general I must repeat that ‘love’ never once deprived me of sleep.

I began to go pretty often to Ivan Semyonitch’s. I used to see Kolosov as before, but neither he nor I ever referred to Varia. My relations with her were of a rather curious kind. She became attached to me with that sort of attachment which excludes every possibility of love. She could not help noticing my warm sympathy, and talked eagerly with me … of what, do you suppose?… of Kolosov, nothing but Kolosov! The man had taken such possession of her that she did not, as it were, belong to herself. I tried in vain to arouse her pride … she was either silent or, if she talked–chattered on about Kolosov. I did not even suspect in those days that sorrow of that kind–talkative sorrow–is in reality far more genuine than any silent suffering. I must own I passed many bitter moments at that time. I was conscious that I was not capable of filling Kolosov’s place; I was conscious that Varia’s past was so full, so rich … and her present so poor…. I got to the point of an involuntary shudder at the words ‘Do you remember’ … with which almost every sentence of hers began. She grew a little thinner during the first days of our acquaintance … but afterwards got better again, and even grew cheerful; she might have been compared then with a wounded bird, not yet quite recovered. Meanwhile my position had become insupportable; the lowest passions gradually gained possession of my soul; it happened to me to slander Kolosov in Varia’s presence. I resolved to cut short such unnatural relations. But how? Part from Varia–I could not…. Declare my love to her–I did not dare; I felt that I could not, as yet, hope for a return. Marry her…. This idea alarmed me; I was only eighteen; I felt a dread of putting all my future into bondage so early; I thought of my father, I could hear the jeering comments of Kolosov’s comrades…. But they say every thought is like dough; you have only to knead it well–you can make anything you like of it. I began, for whole days together, to dream of marriage…. I imagined what gratitude would fill Varia’s heart when I, the friend and confidant of Kolosov, should offer her my hand, knowing her to be hopelessly in love with another. Persons of experience, I remembered, had told me that marriage for love is a complete absurdity; I began to indulge my fancy; I pictured to myself our peaceful life together in some snug corner of South Russia; an mentally I traced the gradual transition in Varia’s heart from gratitude to affection, from affection to love…. I vowed to myself at once to leave Moscow, the university, to forget everything and every one. I began to avoid meeting Kolosov.