“Here you have modesty, brother, silence, bashfulness, a savage virtue... and yet she’s sighing and melting like wax, simply melting! Save me from her, by all that’s unholy! She’s most prepossessing... I’ll repay you, I’ll do anything....”
Zossimov laughed more violently than ever.
“Well, you are smitten! But what am I to do with her?”
“It won’t be much trouble, I assure you. Talk any rot you like to her, as long as you sit by her and talk. You’re a doctor, too; try curing her of something. I swear you won’t regret it. She has a piano, and you know, I strum a little. I have a song there, a genuine Russian one: ‘I shed hot tears.’ She likes the genuine article—and well, it all began with that song; Now you’re a regular performer, a maître, a Rubinstein.... I assure you, you won’t regret it!”
“But have you made her some promise? Something signed? A promise of marriage, perhaps?”
“Nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of the kind! Besides she is not that sort at all.... Tchebarov tried that....”
“Well then, drop her!”
“But I can’t drop her like that!”
“Why can’t you?”
“Well, I can’t, that’s all about it! There’s an element of attraction here, brother.”