Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 12, 2025
This second letter, of course, we all read; some of us took a copy of it. Tyeglev had evidently taken pains over the composition of this letter. Oh, what a painful and unpleasant impression that phrase made upon me, with every word, every letter of it, carefully written in the dead man's childish handwriting! Was it worth while, I asked myself, to invent such rubbish at such a moment?
As she had no children of her own she had adopted a little girl, an orphan, of the working class, given her a liberal education and treated her like a daughter. She was called Masha. Tyeglev saw her almost every day. It ended in their falling in love with one another and Masha's giving herself to him. This was discovered.
I remembered another friend of mine, a very intelligent man, who had a very plain wife, neither intelligent nor rich and was very unhappy in his marriage. When someone in my presence asked him why he had married and suggested that it was probably for love, he answered, "Not for love at all. It simply happened." And in this case Tyeglev loved a girl passionately and did not marry her.
And Tyeglev, on his side, was well-disposed to me; with me he felt at ease, with me he used to talk in my presence he ventured to leave the strange pedestal on which he had been placed either by his own efforts or by chance.
Then he was suddenly silent, stood still outside near the corner where I was lying and without uttering another word, came back into the hut and lay down without taking off his boots and overcoat. "Knock ... knock ... knock!" I began again. "Knock ... knock ... knock!" But Tyeglev did not stir, did not ask who was knocking, and merely propped his head on his hand.
At his last interview with her, he was forced to speak out: she wanted to know the truth and wrung it out of him. "Well," she said, "if I am not to be your wife, I know what there is left for me to do." More than a fortnight had passed since that last interview. "I never for a moment deceived myself as to the meaning of her last words," added Tyeglev.
This incident strengthened still further his reputation as a mysterious, fatal character. It has often occurred to me since that if he had not succeeded in the trick with the cards, there is no knowing what turn it would have taken and how he would have looked at himself; but this unexpected success clinched the matter. It may well be understood that Tyeglev clutched at this reputation.
"I don't go in for tricks," Tyeglev answered drily and walked into the other room. How it happened that he guessed the card right, I can't pretend to explain: but I saw it with my own eyes. Many of the players present tried to do the same and not one of them succeeded: one or two did guess one card but never two in succession. And Tyeglev had guessed three!
"You imagine perhaps," he brought out, glancing askance at me, "that I shouldn't have the spirit to do it? You don't know me ... I have a will of iron." "Well said," I thought to myself. Tyeglev pondered, heaved a deep sigh and dropping his chibouk out of his hand, informed me that that day was a very important one for him.
That someone really had three times called "Ilyusha" I could not doubt; that there was something plaintive and mysterious in the call, I was forced to own to myself.... But who knows, perhaps all this only appeared to be unaccountable and in reality could be explained as simply as the knocking which had agitated Tyeglev so much.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking