long look upon my face, listened
to my voice which was unconcerned and passionless, and the whole
of her little figure, every bit of it, even her muff and her hood
expressed the utmost bewilderment, and on her face was written:
"What does it mean? Who uttered _those_ words? Did he, or did I
only fancy it?"

The uncertainty worried her and drove her out of all patience. The
poor girl did not answer my questions, frowned, and was on the point
of tears.

"Hadn't we better go home?" I asked.

"Well, I . . . I like this tobogganning," she said, flushing. "Shall
we go down once more?"

She "liked" the tobogganning, and yet as she got into the sledge
she was, as both times before, pale, trembling, hardly able to
breathe for terror.

We went down for the third time, and I saw she was looking at my
face and watching my lips. But I put my handkerchief to my lips,
coughed, and when we reached the middle of the hill I succeeded in
bringing out:

"I love you, Nadya!"

And the mystery remained a mystery! Nadenka was silent, pondering
on something. . . . I saw her home, she tried to walk slowly,
slackened her pace and kept waiting to see whether I would not say
those words to her, and I saw how her soul was suffering, what
effort she was making not to say to herself:

"It cannot be that the wind said them! And I don't want it to be
the wind that said them!"

Next morning I got a little note:

"If you are tobogganning to-day, come for me. --N."

And from that time I began going every day tobogganning with Nadenka,
and as we flew down in the sledge, every time I pronounced in a low
voice the same words: "I love you, Nadya!"

Soon Nadenka grew used to that phrase as to alcohol or morphia. She
could not live without it. It is true that flying down the ice-hill
terrified her as before, but now the terror and danger gave a
peculiar fascination to words of love--words which as before were
a mystery and tantalized the soul. The same two--the wind and I
were still suspected. . . . Which of the two was making love to her
she did not know, but apparently by now she did not care; from which
goblet one drinks matters little if only the beverage is intoxicating.

It happened I went to the skating-ground alone at midday; mingling
with the crowd I saw Nadenka go up to the ice-hill and look about
for me . . . then she timidly mounted the steps. . . . She was
frightened of going alone--oh, how frightened! She was white as
the snow,