“I always did think you that, sir!” said Pavel, hanging his head.
“Of course, quite so—I didn't mean quite that—I wanted to say, in spite of all prejudices you may have formed, you——”
“Yes, in spite of all prejudices!”
“And when you first came to Petersburg?” asked Velchaninoff, who himself felt the monstrosity of his own inquisitive questions, but could not resist putting them.
“I considered you the most honourable of men when I first came to Petersburg, sir; no less. I always respected you, Alexey Ivanovitch!”
Pavel Pavlovitch raised his eyes and looked at his companion without the smallest trace of confusion.
Velchaninoff suddenly felt cowed and afraid. He was anxious that nothing should result—nothing disagreeable—from this conversation, since he himself was responsible for having initiated it.
“I loved you, Alexey Ivanovitch; all that year at T—— I loved you—you did not observe it,” continued Pavel Pavlovitch, his voice trembling with emotion, to the great discomfiture of his companion. “You did not observe my affection, because I was too lowly a being to deserve any sort of notice; but it was unnecessary that you should observe my love. Well, sir, and all these nine years I have thought of you, for I have never known such a year of life as that year was.” (Pavel's eyes seemed to have a special glare in them at this point.) “I remembered many of your sayings and expressions, sir, and I thought of you always as a man imbued with the loftiest sentiments, and gifted with knowledge and intellect, sir—of the highest order—a man of grand ideas. ‘Great ideas do not proceed so frequently from greatness of intellect, as from elevation of taste and feeling.’ You yourself said that, sir, once. I dare say you have forgotten the fact, but you did say it. Therefore I always thought of you, sir, as a man of taste and feeling; consequently I concluded—consequently I trusted you, in spite of everything.”
Pavel Pavlovitch's chin suddenly began to tremble. Velchaninoff was frightened out of his wits. This unexpected tone must be put an end to at all hazards.
“Enough, Pavel Pavlovitch!” he said softly, blushing violently and with some show of irritation. “And why—why (Velchaninoff suddenly began to shout passionately)—why do you come hanging round the neck of a sick man, a worried man—a man who is almost out of his wits with fever and annoyance of all sorts, and drag him into this abyss of lies and mirage and vision and shame—and unnatural, disproportionate, distorted nonsense! Yes, sir, that's the most shameful part of the whole business—the disproportionate nonsense of what you say! You know it's all humbug; both of us are mean wretches—both of us; and if you like I'll prove to you at once that not only you don't love me, but that you loathe and hate me with all your heart, and that you are a liar, whether you know it or not! You took me down to see your bride, not—not a bit in the world to try how she would behave in the society of other men—absurd idea!—You simply saw me, yesterday, and your vile impulse led you to carry me off there in order that you might show me the girl, and say, as it were. There, look at that! She's to be mine! Try your hand there if you can! It was nothing but your challenge to me! You may not have known it, but this was so, as I say; and you felt the impulse which I have described. Such a challenge could not be made without hatred; consequently you hate me.”