Anna dropped her eyes.--"I do not know!" she said, after the lapse of several minutes.--"God is my witness, I do not know!" she continued impetuously, perceiving that Aratoff had flung his hands apart as though he did not believe her.... "From the very time she arrived here she seemed to be thoughtful, gloomy. Something must infallibly have happened to her in Moscow, which I was not able to divine! But, on the contrary, on that fatal day, she seemed ... if not more cheerful, at any rate more tranquil than usual. I did not even have any forebodings," added Anna with a bitter smile, as though reproaching herself for that. "You see," she began again, "it seemed to have been written in Katya's fate, that she should be unhappy. She was convinced of it herself from her early youth. She would prop her head on her hand, meditate, and say: 'I shall not live long!' She had forebodings. Just imagine, she even saw beforehand,--sometimes in a dream, sometimes in ordinary wise,--what was going to happen to her! 'I cannot live as I wish, so I will not live at all,' ... was her adage.--'Our life is in our own hands, you know!' And she proved it." Anna covered her face with her hands and ceased speaking. "Anna Semyonovna," began Aratoff, after waiting a little: "perhaps you have heard to what the newspapers attributed...." "To unhappy love?" interrupted Anna, removing her hands from her face with a jerk. "That is a calumny, a calumny, a lie!... My unsullied, unapproachable Katya ... Katya! ... and an unhappy, rejected love? And would not I have known about that?... Everybody, everybody fell in love with her ... but she.... And whom could she have fallen in love with here? Who, out of all these men, was worthy of her? Who had attained to that ideal of honour, uprightness, purity,--most of all, purity,--which she constantly held before her, in spite of all her defects?... Reject her ... her...." Anna's voice broke.... Her fingers trembled slightly. Suddenly she flushed scarlet all over ... flushed with indignation, and at that moment--and only at that moment--did she resemble her sister. Aratoff attempted to apologise. "Listen," broke in Anna once more:--"I insist upon it that you shall not believe that calumny yourself, and that you shall dissipate it, if possible! Here, you wish to write an article about her, or something of that sort:--here is an opportunity for you to defend her memory! That is why I am talking so frankly with you. Listen: Katya left a diary...." Aratoff started.--"A diary," he whispered. "Yes, a diary ... that is to say, a few pages only.--Katya was not fond of writing ... for whole months together she did not write at all ... and her letters were so short! But she was always, always truthful, she never lied.... Lie, forsooth, with her vanity! I ... I will show you that diary! You shall see for yourself whether it contains a single hint of any such unhappy love!"