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Notwithstanding my fondness for Dimitri and the pleasure which his frankness had afforded me, I now felt as though I desired to hear no more about his feelings and intentions with regard to Lubov Sergievna, but to talk unstintedly about my own love for Sonetchka, who seemed to me an object of affection of a far higher order.

I have made an offer to Marya Sergievna Perekatov, and have been accepted by her, and also by her parents. I inform you of this fact directly and immediately to avoid any kind of misapprehension or suspicion.

For more than a quarter of an hour a young and pretty girl had been moving before his eyes. 'Marya Sergievna, he began again, in a sharp and strange voice, 'you know my feelings now, you know what I wanted to see you for.... You've been so kind.... You tell me, too, at last what I may hope for....

She was afraid of writing, but she told her messenger, a spare little peasant who could walk sixty versts in a day, to say to Ivan that he was not to fret too much; that please God, all would yet go right, and his father's wrath would turn to kindness that she, too, would have preferred a different daughter-in-law; but that evidently God had willed it as it was, and that she sent her paternal benediction to Malania Sergievna.

Throughout the whole of our acquaintance she appeared to me merely a plain, though not positively ugly, girl, concerning whom one would never ask oneself the question, "Am I, or am I not, in love with her?" Sometimes I would talk to her direct, but more often I did so through Dimitri or Lubov Sergievna; and it was the latter method which afforded me the most pleasure.

I had imagined that Lubov Sergievna, as my friend's friend, would at once say something friendly and familiar to me; yet, after gazing at me fixedly for a while, as though in doubt whether the remark she was about to make to me would not be too friendly, she at length asked me what faculty I was in.

'Do be open with me, Marya Sergievna... 'O, silly fellow! how slow you are! Why, look at me, am I not open with you, don't you see right through me? 'Oh, very well... yes; I believe you, Kister said with a smile, seeing with what anxious insistence she tried to catch his eyes. 'But tell me, what induced you to arrange to meet Lutchkov? 'What induced me? I really don't know.

Yet for some reason or another I could not make up my mind to tell him straight out how splendid it would seem when I had married Sonetchka and we were living in the country of how we should have little children who would crawl about the floor and call me Papa, and of how delighted I should be when he, Dimitri, brought his wife, Lubov Sergievna, to see us, wearing an expensive gown.

I also tell you that your friendship for Lubov Sergievna is founded on the same basis, namely, that she thinks you a god." "And I tell you once more that it is not so." "Oh, I know it for myself," I retorted with the heat of suppressed anger, and designing to disarm him with my frankness.

'There are kind-hearted people in the world, she observed with a smile; 'some even too kind.... 'I understand you, Marya Sergievna, and believe me, I appreciate your friendliness... I... I... You won't be angry? 'No.... What do you want to say? 'I want to say... that I think you charming... Marya Sergievna, awfully charming....