Rogojin listened to the prince’s excited words with a bitter smile. His conviction was, apparently, unalterable.
“How dreadfully you look at me, Parfen!” said the prince, with a feeling of dread.
“Water or the knife?” said the latter, at last. “Ha, ha—that’s exactly why she is going to marry me, because she knows for certain that the knife awaits her. Prince, can it be that you don’t even yet see what’s at the root of it all?”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Perhaps he really doesn’t understand me! They do say that you are a—you know what! She loves another—there, you can understand that much! Just as I love her, exactly so she loves another man. And that other man is—do you know who? It’s you . There—you didn’t know that, eh?”
“I?”
“You, you! She has loved you ever since that day, her birthday! Only she thinks she cannot marry you, because it would be the ruin of you. ‘Everybody knows what sort of a woman I am,’ she says. She told me all this herself, to my very face! She’s afraid of disgracing and ruining you, she says, but it doesn’t matter about me. She can marry me all right! Notice how much consideration she shows for me!”
“But why did she run away to me, and then again from me to—”
“From you to me? Ha, ha! that’s nothing! Why, she always acts as though she were in a delirium nowadays! Either she says, ‘Come on, I’ll marry