“In that case let us sit down.… Sergey Petrovich,” she continued, after we had seated ourselves. “All this day you have tried to avoid seeing me, and have gone round me, as if you were afraid of meeting me and as if on purpose, I had decided to speak to you.… I am proud and egoistical.… I do not know how to obtrude myself … but once in a lifetime one can sacrifice pride.”
“To what do you refer?”
“I had decided to ask you.… The question is humiliating, it is difficult for me.… I don't know how I shall stand it.… Answer me without looking at me.… Sergey Petrovich, is it possible you are not sorry for me?”
Nadia looked at me and slightly shook her head. Her face became paler. Her upper lip trembled and was drawn to one side.
“Sergey Petrovich! I always think that … you have been separated from me by some misunderstanding, some caprice.… I think if we had an explanation, all would go on as formerly. If I did not think it, I would not have strength to put you the question you are about to hear. Sergey Petrovich, I am unhappy.… You must see it.… My life is no life.… All is dried up.… And chiefly … this uncertainty … one does not know, whether to hope or not.… Your conduct towards me is so incomprehensible that it is impossible to arrive at any certain conclusion.… Tell me, and I shall know what to do.… My life will then have an aim.… I shall then decide on something.”
“Nadezhda Nikolaevna, you wish to ask me about something?” I said, preparing in my mind an answer to the question I had a presentiment was coming.
“Yes, I want to ask.… The question is humiliating.… If anybody were listening to us they might think I was obtruding myself, in a word,—was a sort of Pushkin's Tatiana.… But this question has been tortured from me.…”
The question was really forced from her by torture. When Nadia turned her face towards me to put that question, I became frightened: Nadia trembled, pressed her fingers together convulsively, and pressed from her lips with melancholy sadness the fatal words. Her pallor was terrible.
“May I hope?” she whispered at last. “Do not be afraid to tell me candidly.… Whatever the answer may be, it will be better than uncertainty. What is it? May I hope?”
She waited for an answer, meanwhile the state of my soul was such that I was incapable of making a sensible answer. Drunk, excited by the occurrence in the grotto, enraged by Pshekhotsky's spying, and Olga's indecision, and the stupid conversation I had had with the Count, I scarcely heard Nadia.