I mentioned Prilukoff's name, and Kamarowsky with knitted eyebrows exclaimed: “You must have very confidential relations with him, if he permits himself to give you ten thousand rubles.”
“Oh, no—no,” I stammered. “He is—he is only lending them to me. I shall pay them back, of course—”
Kamarowsky had risen from his chair. He took both my hands and pressed them to his breast.
“How wrong of you! How wrong! Why did you not ask me? Have you no confidence in me? How can you accept assistance from a stranger when I am here—I, who am so devoted to you?”
I know not why I burst into tears. A sense of shame and degradation overcame me. In a moment his arms were round me.
“Dearest, sweetest, do not cry. I know you must feel humiliated at accepting money from that man, who may afterwards make all kinds of claims upon you. Return the money to him, I implore you, and accept it from me.”
I could not answer for my tears.
“Promise me that you will give it back,” Kamarowsky went on, clasping me closer to him. “If you refuse me this favor I shall go away and you shall never see me again. For the sake of our Emilia—for the sake of little Grania—accept it from me. And let me be your friend from now on and forever.”
It took a long time to reconcile me to the sense of my own debasement.
He wrote out a check to me for ten thousand rubles and put it into my hands. He closed my fingers forcibly over it, pressing them closely and thanking me in a moved voice.