“Oh, it isn’t as bad as all that. You must promise me to call on her.”
“Can’t we put it off—indefinitely?”
“Clara Rodionovna!”
His imploring voice threatened to draw from him the great yearning plea that was waiting to be heard, but this same entreating voice of his thrilled her so that she hastened to yield.
“Very well,” she said.
“Will you come? Oh, it’s so kind of you. I am ever so much obliged to you—but I declare I am raving like a maniac,” he interrupted himself with a queer smile that forthwith lapsed into an expression of rage. “What I really want to say is that I love you.”
The lines of her face hardened. Her rich complexion burst into flame. She looked gravely at nothing, as he proceeded:
“It seems to me as though I had felt that way ever since that Pievakin episode, Clara Rodionovna. I owe so much to you. If it had not been for you I might still be leading the life of a knave and an idiot. What you did on that occasion served to open my eyes and showed me the difference between light and darkness. And now it seems to me that if you were mine, it would infuse great energy and courage into me. I have got so used to seeing you, I hate to think of being apart from you for a single moment. Oh, you are so dear to me, I am so happy to sit by your side, to be allowed to say all this to you.”
“You are dear to me, too,” she said in great embarrassment.