“Yes, of course, she did say something!”
“Out with it then, damn it! Out with it at once!” and Gania stamped his foot twice on the pavement.
“As soon as I had finished reading it, she told me that you were fishing for her; that you wished to compromise her so far as to receive some hopes from her, trusting to which hopes you might break with the prospect of receiving a hundred thousand roubles. She said that if you had done this without bargaining with her, if you had broken with the money prospects without trying to force a guarantee out of her first, she might have been your friend. That’s all, I think. Oh no, when I asked her what I was to say, as I took the letter, she replied that ‘no answer is the best answer.’ I think that was it. Forgive me if I do not use her exact expressions. I tell you the sense as I understood it myself.”
Ungovernable rage and madness took entire possession of Gania, and his fury burst out without the least attempt at restraint.
“Oh! that’s it, is it!” he yelled. “She throws my letters out of the window, does she! Oh! and she does not condescend to bargain, while I do, eh? We shall see, we shall see! I shall pay her out for this.”
He twisted himself about with rage, and grew paler and paler; he shook his fist. So the pair walked along a few steps. Gania did not stand on ceremony with the prince; he behaved just as though he were alone in his room. He clearly counted the latter as a nonentity. But suddenly he seemed to have an idea, and recollected himself.
“But how was it?” he asked, “how was it that you (idiot that you are),” he added to himself, “were so very confidential a couple of hours after your first meeting with these people? How was that, eh?”
Up to this moment jealousy had not been one of his torments; now it suddenly gnawed at his heart.
“That is a thing I cannot undertake to explain,” replied the prince. Gania looked at him with angry contempt.
“Oh! I suppose the present she wished to make to you, when she took you into the dining-room, was her confidence, eh?”