“Let us decide to tell my aunt this week,” she replied, “and at once this chatter will cease. Had I not known you so well, I should scarcely have been able to understand the fact that you can be afraid of servants’ gossip, yet not of making me anxious. Really I cannot understand you.” “Listen,” presently she went on. “There is more in this than meets the eye. Tell me all that is in your mind. What does it mean?” He looked at her--then kissed her hand and sighed. “What have you been doing during the past week or so?” she persisted as she glanced round the room. “What a wretched place you have got! The windows are small, and the curtains dirty. Where are your _other_ rooms?” He hastened to show her them, in the hope that he might divert her mind from the question of his late doings; but she only repeated the question. “I have been reading,” he replied, “and writing, and thinking of you.” “Have you yet read _my_ books?” she inquired. “Where are they? I will take them back with me.” One of them happened to be lying on the table. She looked at the page at which it was open, and saw that the page was covered with dust. “You have not read them!” she exclaimed. “No,” he confessed. Once more she looked at the mess and disorder in the room, and then inquired: “Then what _have_ you been doing? You have neither been writing nor reading.” “No; I have not had time to do so.. In this place, as soon as one rises, the rooms need to be swept, and other interruptions occur afterwards. Next, when dinner is over----” “When dinner is over you need to go to sleep.” So positive in its assurance was her tone that after a moment’s hesitation he replied that her conjecture was correct. “Why do you do that?” “In order to pass the time. You are not here with me, Olga, and life is wearisome and unbearable without you.” Her gaze became so stern that he broke off abruptly. “Listen, Ilya,” she said very gravely. “Do you remember saying in the park that at length your life had been fired to flame, and that you believed me to be the aim, the ideal, of your life?” “How should I _not_ remember it, seeing that it has revolutionized my whole existence? Cannot you _see_ how happy I am?” “No, I do _not_ see it,” she replied coldly. “Not only have you deceived me, but also you are letting yourself relapse into your former ways.” “Deceived you? I swear to God that, were that so, I would leap into the pit of Hell!” “Yes--if the pit of Hell were just beneath your feet; but, were you to put off doing so, even for a day or two, you would straightway change your mind, and become nervous about the deed--more especially should Zakhar and the rest begin gossiping on the subject! _That_ is not love.”