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 to—to praise you for one thing—I also wished to show you that I knew all—and did not approve of your conduct.”
“You are very unfair to me, and to that unfortunate woman of whom you spoke just now in such dreadful terms, Aglaya.”