“I don’t understand you in the least, Parfen.”
“Oh, she told me all about it long ago, and tonight I saw for myself. I saw you at the music, you know, and whom you were sitting with. She swore to me yesterday, and again today, that you are madly in love with Aglaya Ivanovna. But that’s all the same to me, prince, and it’s not my affair at all; for if you have ceased to love her , she has not ceased to love you . You know, of course, that she wants to marry you to that girl? She’s sworn to it! Ha, ha! She says to me, ‘Until then I won’t marry you. When they go to church, we’ll go too—and not before.’ What on earth does she mean by it? I don’t know, and I never did. Either she loves you without limits or—yet, if she loves you, why does she wish to marry you to another girl? She says, ‘I want to see him happy,’ which is to say—she loves you.”
“I wrote, and I say to you once more, that she is not in her right mind,” said the prince, who had listened with anguish to what Rogojin said.
“Goodness knows—you may be wrong there! At all events, she named the day this evening, as we left the gardens. ‘In three weeks,’ says she, ‘and perhaps sooner, we shall be married.’ She swore to it, took off her cross and kissed it. So it all depends upon you now, prince, You see! Ha, ha!”
“That’s all madness. What you say about me, Parfen, never can and never will be. Tomorrow, I shall come and see you—”
“How can she be mad,” Rogojin interrupted, “when she is sane enough for other people and only mad for you? How can she write letters to her , if she’s mad? If she were insane they would observe it in her letters.”
“What letters?” said the prince, alarmed.
“She writes to her —and the girl reads the letters. Haven’t you heard?—You are sure to hear; she’s sure to show you the letters herself.”
“I won’t believe this!” cried the prince.