ven 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!"

Anna hastily drew from the table-drawer a thin copy-