"Enough," he said, striking the table with his open hand. "I beg you to listen to me, Marya Timofyevna. Do me the favour to concentrate all your attention if you can. You're not altogether mad, you know!" he broke out impatiently. "Tomorrow I shall make our marriage public. You never will live in a palace, get that out of your head. Do you want to live with me for the rest of your life, only very far away from here? In the mountains in Switzerland, there's a place there.... Don't be afraid. I'll never abandon you or put you in a madhouse. I shall have money enough to live without asking anyone's help. You shall have a servant, you shall do no work at all. Everything you want that's possible shall be got for you. You shall pray, go where you like, and do what you like. I won't touch you. I won't go away from the place myself at all. If you like, I won't speak to you all my life, or if you like, you can tell me your stories every evening as you used to do in Petersburg in the corners. I'll read aloud to you if you like. But it must be all your life in the same place, and that place is a gloomy one. Will you? Are you ready? You won't regret it, torment me with tears and curses, will you?" She listened with extreme curiosity, and for a long time she was silent, thinking. "It all seems incredible to me," she said at last, ironically and disdainfully. "I might live for forty years in those mountains," she laughed. "What of it? Let's live forty years then..." said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, scowling. "H'm! I won't come for anything." "Not even with me?" "And what are you that I should go with you? I'm to sit on a mountain beside him for forty years on end--a pretty story! And upon my word, how long-suffering people have become nowadays! No, it cannot be that a falcon has become an owl. My prince is not like that!" she said, raising her head proudly and triumphantly. Light seemed to dawn upon him. "What makes you call me a prince, and... for whom do you take me?" he asked quickly. "Why, aren't you the prince?" "I never have been one." "So yourself, yourself, you tell me straight to my face that you're not the prince?" "I tell you I never have been." "Good Lord!" she cried, clasping her hands. "I was ready to expect anything from _his_ enemies, but such insolence, never! Is he alive?" she shrieked in a frenzy, turning upon Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. "Have you killed him? Confess!" "Whom do you take me for?" he cried, jumping up from his chair with a distorted face; but it was not easy now to frighten her. She was triumphant.