oing sometimes. I am persuaded that you came here today in
the full belief that I am in love with you, and that I arranged this
meeting because of that," she cried, with annoyance.

"I admit I was afraid that that was the case, yesterday," blundered the
prince (he was rather confused), "but today I am quite convinced that--"

"How?" cried Aglaya--and her lower lip trembled violently. "You were
AFRAID that I--you dared to think that I--good gracious! you suspected,
perhaps, that I sent for you to come here in order to catch you in a
trap, so that they should find us here together, and make you marry
me--"

"Aglaya Ivanovna, aren't you ashamed of saying such a thing? How could
such a horrible idea enter your sweet, innocent heart? I am certain you
don't believe a word of what you say, and probably you don't even know
what you are talking about."

Aglaya sat with her eyes on the ground; she seemed to have alarmed even
herself by what she had said.

"No, I'm not; I'm not a bit ashamed!" she murmured. "And how do you
know my heart is innocent? And how dared you send me a love--letter that
time?"

"LOVE-LETTER? My letter a love-letter? That letter was the most
respectful of letters; it went straight from my heart, at what was
perhaps the most painful moment of my life! I thought of you at the time
as a kind of light. I--"

"Well, very well, very well!" she said, but quite in a different tone.
She was remorseful now, and bent forward to touch his shoulder, though
still trying not to look him in the face, as if the more persuasively
to beg him not to be angry with her. "Very well," she continued, looking
thoroughly ashamed of herself, "I feel that I said a very foolish thing.
I only did it just to try you. Take it as unsaid, and if I offended you,
forgive me. Don't look straight at me like that, please; turn your head
away. You called it a 'horrible idea'; I only said it to shock you.
Very often I am myself afraid of saying what I intend to say, and out it
comes all the same. You have just told me that you wrote that letter at
the most painful moment of your life. I know what moment that was!" she
added softly, looking at the ground again.

"Oh, if you could know all!"

"I DO know all!" she cried, with another burst of indignation. "You were
living in the same house as that horrible woman with whom you ran away."
She did not blush as she said this; on the contrary, she grew pale,
and started from her seat, apparently