“And if he did not love her,” I continued, “why did he play with her as if she were a child?”
“Yes, yes, A. had been culpable,” he replied interrupting me; “but all that is over, and they have parted from each other ... good friends!”
“But this is frightful! And is there no other end?” I exclaimed, terrified at what I was saying.
“Yes, there is one.” And he uncovered his agitated face, and looked at me steadily. “There are even two other ends, quite different. But, for the love of God, do not interrupt me, and listen to me quietly. Some say,” he went on, rising, and giving a forced, sad smile, “some say that A. went mad, that he loved B. with an insane love, and that he told her so.... But that she only laughed at him. For her the matter had been but a jest, a trifle; for him,—the one thing in his life!”
I shivered, and would have broken in, to tell him that he should not dare to speak for me; but he stopped me, and, laying his hand upon mine:
“Wait!” he said, in a shaking voice: “others say that she was sorry for him, that she fancied—poor little girl, knowing nothing of the world—that she might actually love him, and that she consented to be his wife. And he—madman—he believed,—believed that all his life was beginning again; but she herself became conscious that she was deceiving him and that he was deceiving her.... Let us talk no more about it!” he concluded, indeed evidently incapable of farther speech, and he silently sat down again opposite me.
He had said, “Let us talk no more about it,” but it was manifest that with all the strength of his soul he was waiting for a word from me. Indeed I tried to speak, and could not; something stopped my breath. I looked at him, he was pale, and his lower lip was trembling. I was very sorry for him. I made another effort, and suddenly succeeding in breaking the silence which paralyzed me. I said, in a slow, concentrated voice, fearing every moment it would fail me:
“There is a third end to the story” (I stopped, but he remained silent), “and this other end is that he did not love her, that he hurt her, hurt her cruelly, that he believed he was right to do it, that he ... that he went away, and that, moreover, moreover, he was proud of it. It is not on my side, but on yours, that the trifling has been, from the first day I loved you; I loved you,” I repeated, and at the word “loved” my voice involuntarily changed from its tone of slow concentration to a kind of wild cry which appalled myself.
He was standing up before me, very pale, his lip trembled more and more, and I saw two heavy tears making their way down his cheeks.
“This is dreadful!”—I could barely get out the words, choked with anger and unshed tears.—“And why?...” I jumped up hastily, to run away.