‘Please,’ she began, speaking in the same jerky and subdued voice, ‘don’t criticise me, don’t think any harm of me. I wrote a letter to you, I made an appointment to meet you, because ... I was afraid.... It seemed to me yesterday,--you seemed to be laughing all the time. Listen,’ she added, with sudden energy, and she stopped short and turned towards me: ‘listen; if you tell with whom ... if you mention at whose room you met me, I’ll throw myself in the water, I’ll drown myself, I’ll make an end of myself!’ At this point, for the first time, she glanced at me with the inquisitive, piercing look I had seen before. ‘Why, she, perhaps, really ... would do it,’ was my thought. ‘Really, Musa Pavlovna,’ I protested, hurriedly: ‘how can you have such a bad opinion of me? Do you suppose I am capable of betraying my friend and injuring you? Besides, come to that, there’s nothing in your relations, as far as I’m aware, deserving of censure.... For goodness’ sake, be calm.’ Musa heard me out, without stirring from the spot, or looking at me again. ‘There’s something else I ought to tell you,’ she began, moving forward again along the path, ‘or else you may think I’m quite mad! I ought to tell you, that old man wants to marry me!’ ‘What old man? The bald one? Punin?’ ‘No--not he! The other ... Paramon Semyonitch.’ ‘Baburin?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Is it possible? Has he made you an offer?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘But you didn’t consent, of course?’ ‘Yes, I did consent ... because I didn’t understand what I was about then. Now it’s a different matter.’ I flung up my hands. ‘Baburin--and you! Why, he must be fifty!’ ‘He says forty-three. But that makes no difference. If he were five--and--twenty I wouldn’t marry him. Much happiness I should find in it! A whole week will go by without his smiling once! Paramon Semyonitch is my benefactor, I am deeply indebted to him; he took care of me, educated me; I should have been utterly lost but for him; I’m bound to look on him as a father.... But be his wife! I’d rather die! I’d rather be in my coffin!’ ‘Why do you keep talking about death, Musa Pavlovna?’ Musa stopped again. ‘Why, is life so sweet, then? Even your friend Vladimir Nikolaitch, I may say, I’ve come to love from being wretched and dull: and then Paramon Semyonitch with his offers of marriage.... Punin, though he bores me with his verses, he doesn’t scare me, anyway; he doesn’t make me read Karamzin in the evenings, when my head’s ready to drop off my shoulders for weariness! And what are these old men to me? They call me cold, too. With them, is it likely I should be warm? If they try to make me--I shall go. Paramon Semyonitch himself’s always saying: Freedom! freedom! All right, I want freedom too. Or else it comes to this! Freedom for every one else, and keeping me in a cage! I’ll tell him so myself. But if you betray me, or drop a hint--remember; they’ll never set eyes on me again!’ Musa stood in the middle of the path.