She did not address me during the rest of the evening. When she left, she barely glanced at me and vouchsafed neither smile nor greeting.
Just for an instant she raised her black-fringed eyes and gazed at me; then her lashes fell; and it was as if a light had been blown out.
I am in love with her! Madly, divinely, desperately in love. Ah, Stepan, love—what an ecstasy and what a disaster!
Your Bozevsky.
It was Dr. Stahl, the “Satanic Stahl,” who got these letters from his cousin Stepan Nebrasoff, and showed them to me. They bewildered and troubled me. What? Was I really so attractive and so perturbing in the eyes of the gallant young Pole—the handsomest officer in the Imperial Guard? I repeated to myself his disquieting epithets: “flower-like,” “ethereal,” “inscrutable”; and in my room at night when I loosened my hair, I wondered: “Does it really look like a cataract of champagne?” When I went out I never smiled, even when I felt inclined to do so, since my gravity had seemed so charming to him.
Night and day he followed me like a shadow—or rather, should I say, like a blaze of light. In whatever direction I turned I was sure to encounter his radiant smile and his flashing glance. His passion encompassed me; I felt like Brunnhilde surrounded by a sea of flame. I was elated yet terrified.
One evening at dinner I made up my mind to speak to Vassili about it.
“Vassili,” I said falteringly, “I think we ought to go away for a time.”
“Away? Where to?” asked my husband.
“Anywhere—anywhere away from Kieff.”