If she had been deceiving me she would have contrived somehow, have answered the letter, and have come to meet me. But she did not know how to tell a lie, so she simply cut it off. It’s her aunt, I thought. I didn’t dare go to the aunt’s; though she knew it, we always met on the quiet. I went about as though I were crazy; I wrote her a last letter and said, ‘If you don’t come I shall come to your aunt’s myself.’ She was frightened and came. She cried; she told me that a German called Schultz, a distant relation, a watchmaker, well-off and elderly, had expressed a desire to marry her⁠—‘to make me happy,’ he says, and not to be left without a wife in his old age; and he loves me, he says, and he’s had the idea in his mind for a long time, but he kept putting it off and saying nothing. ‘You see, Sasha,’ she said, ‘he’s rich and it’s a fortunate thing for me; surely you don’t want to deprive me of my good fortune?’ I looked at her⁠—she was crying and hugging me.⁠ ⁠… ‘Ech,’ I thought, ‘she is talking sense! What’s the use of marrying a soldier, even though I am a sergeant?’ ‘Well, Luise,’ said I, ‘goodbye, God be with you. I’ve no business to hinder your happiness. Tell me, is he good-looking?’ ‘No,’ she said, ‘he is an old man, with a long nose,’ and she laughed herself. I left her.