“So.”
“But why so?”
She again looked up, as it seemed to him, with the same angry look.
“Well, then, thus it is,” she said. “You must leave me. It is true what I am saying. I cannot. You just give it up altogether.” Her lips trembled and she was silent for a moment. “It is true. I’d rather hang myself.”
Nekhludoff felt that in this refusal there was hatred and unforgiving resentment, but there was also something besides, something good. This confirmation of the refusal in cold blood at once quenched all the doubts in Nekhludoff’s bosom, and brought back the serious, triumphant emotion he had felt in relation to Katusha.
“Katusha, what I have said I will again repeat,” he uttered, very seriously. “I ask you to marry me. If you do not wish it, and for as long as you do not wish it, I shall only continue to follow you, and shall go where you are taken.”
“That is your business. I shall not say anything more,” she answered, and her lips began to tremble again.
He, too, was silent, feeling unable to speak.
“I shall now go to the country, and then to Petersburg,” he said, when he was quieter again. “I shall do my utmost to get your—our case, I mean, reconsidered, and by the help of God the sentence may be revoked.”
“And if it is not revoked, never mind. I have deserved it, if not in this case, in other ways,” she said, and he saw how difficult it was for her to keep down her tears.