oblivious of what she did, and
immediately sat down again. Her lip continued to tremble for a long
time.

There was silence for a moment. The prince was taken aback by the
suddenness of this last reply, and did not know to what he should
attribute it.

"I don't love you a bit!" she said suddenly, just as though the words
had exploded from her mouth.

The prince did not answer, and there was silence again. "I love Gavrila
Ardalionovitch," she said, quickly; but hardly audibly, and with her
head bent lower than ever.

"That is NOT true," said the prince, in an equally low voice.

"What! I tell stories, do I? It is true! I gave him my promise a couple
of days ago on this very seat."

The prince was startled, and reflected for a moment.

"It is not true," he repeated, decidedly; "you have just invented it!"

"You are wonderfully polite. You know he is greatly improved. He loves
me better than his life. He let his hand burn before my very eyes in
order to prove to me that he loved me better than his life!"

"He burned his hand!"

"Yes, believe it or not! It's all the same to me!"

The prince sat silent once more. Aglaya did not seem to be joking; she
was too angry for that.

"What! he brought a candle with him to this place? That is, if the
episode happened here; otherwise I can't."

"Yes, a candle! What's there improbable about that?"

"A whole one, and in a candlestick?"

"Yes--no-half a candle--an end, you know--no, it was a whole candle;
it's all the same. Be quiet, can't you! He brought a box of matches too,
if you like, and then lighted the candle and held his finger in it for
half an hour and more!--There! Can't that be?"

"I saw him yesterday, and his fingers were all right!"

Aglaya suddenly burst out laughing, as simply as a child.

"Do you know why I have just told you these lies?" She appealed to the
prince, of a sudden, with the most childlike candour, and with the
laugh still trembling on her lips. "Because when one tells a lie, if one
insists on something unusual and eccentric--something too 'out of the
way'' for anything, you know--the more impossible the thing is, the more
plausible does the lie sound. I've noticed this. But I managed it badly;
I didn't know how to work it." She suddenly frowned again at this point
as though at some sudden unpleasant recollection.

"If"--she began, looking seriously and even sadly at him--"if when I
read you all that about the 'poor knight,' I wished