continued:

"You know that I am your slave: I have never been able to resist you...
and I shall be punished for it, you will cease to love me! At least,
I want to preserve my reputation... not for myself--that you know very
well!... Oh! I beseech you: do not torture me, as before, with idle
doubts and feigned coldness! It may be that I shall die soon; I feel
that I am growing weaker from day to day... And, yet, I cannot think of
the future life, I think only of you... You men do not understand the
delights of a glance, of a pressure of the hand... but as for me, I
swear to you that, when I listen to your voice, I feel such a deep,
strange bliss that the most passionate kisses could not take its place."

Meanwhile, Princess Mary had finished her song. Murmurs of praise were
to be heard all around. I went up to her after all the other guests, and
said something rather carelessly to her on the subject of her voice.

She made a little grimace, pouting her lower lip, and dropped a very
sarcastic curtsey.

"That is all the more flattering," she said, "because you have not been
listening to me at all; but perhaps you do not like music?"...

"On the contrary, I do... After dinner, especially."

"Grushnitski is right in saying that you have very prosaic tastes... and
I see that you like music in a gastronomic respect."

"You are mistaken again: I am by no means an epicure. I have a most
wretched digestion. But music after dinner puts one to sleep, and
to sleep after dinner is healthful; consequently I like music in a
medicinal respect. In the evening, on the contrary, it excites my nerves
too much: I become either too melancholy or too gay. Both are fatiguing,
where there is no positive reason for being either sorrowful or glad.
And, moreover, melancholy in society is ridiculous, and too great gaiety
is unbecoming"...

She did not hear me to the end, but went away and sat beside
Grushnitski, and they entered into a sort of sentimental conversation.
Apparently the Princess answered his sage phrases rather absent-mindedly
and inconsequently, although endeavouring to show that she was
listening to him with attention, because sometimes he looked at her in
astonishment, trying to divine the cause of the inward agitation which
was expressed at times in her restless glance...

But I have found you out, my dear Princess! Have a care! You want to pay
me back in the same coin, to wound my vanity--you will not succeed! And
if yo