The Count sent me letter after letter, each one more rueful and humiliating than the last.… He implored me to “forget everything” and come to him; he apologized for Pshekhotsky, he begged me to forgive that “kind, simple, but somewhat shallow man,” he was surprised that owing to trifles I had decided to break off old and friendly connexions. In one of his last letters he promised to come to me and, if I wished it, to bring Pshekhotsky with him, who would ask my pardon, “although he did not feel that he was at all in fault.” I read the letters and in answer begged each messenger to leave me in peace. I knew well how to be capricious!
At the very height of my nervous agitation, when I, standing at the window, was deciding to go away somewhere—anywhere except to the Count's estate—when I was tormenting myself with arguments, self-reproaches, and visions of love that awaited me with Olga, my door opened quietly, I heard light footsteps behind me, and soon my neck was encircled by two pretty little arms.
“Olga, is that you?” I asked and looked round.
I recognized her by her hot breath, by the manner in which she hung on my neck, and even by her scent. Pressing her head to my cheek, she appeared to me extraordinarily happy.… From happiness she could not say a word.… I pressed her to my breast and—where had the melancholy, and all the questions with which I had been tormenting myself during the whole of three days, disappeared? I laughed and jumped about with joy like the veriest schoolboy.
Olga was in a blue silk dress, which suited her pale face and splendid flaxen hair very well. The dress was in the latest fashion and must have been very expensive. It probably cost Urbenin a quarter of his yearly salary.
“How lovely you are to-day!” I said, lifting Olga up in my arms and kissing her neck. “Well, what? How are you? Quite well?”
“Why, you haven't much of a place here!” she said, casting her eyes round my study. “You're a rich man, you receive a high salary, and yet … you live quite poorly.”
“Not everybody can live as luxuriously as the Count, my darling,” I said. “But let us leave my wealth in peace. What good genius has brought you into my den?”
“Stop, Serezha! You'll tumble my frock.… Put me down.… I've only come to you for a moment, darling! I told everybody at home I was going to Akat'ikha, the Count's washerwoman, who lives here only three doors off. Let me go, darling!… It's awkward. Why haven't you been to see me for so long?”
I answered something, placed her on a chair opposite me, and began to contemplate her beauty. For a minute we looked at each other in silence.