“I am already near the end of it, though there is still some arranging to be done, which I can do in St. Petersburg.”
“You will not end your romance either, neither the paper one nor the real one.” said Mark.
Raisky was about to answer, but thought better of it, and was quickly gone.
“Why do you think he won’t finish the novel?” asked Leonti.
“He is only half a man,” replied Mark with a scornful, bitter laugh.
Raisky walked in the direction of home. His victory over himself seemed so assured that he was ashamed of his earlier weakness. He pictured to himself how he would now appear to her in a new and surprising guise, bold, deliberately scornful, with neither eyes nor desire for her beauty; and he pictured her astonishment and sorrow.
In his impatience to see the effect of this new development in himself he stole into her room and crossed the carpet without betraying his presence. She sat with her elbows on the table, reading a letter, written as he noticed on blue paper in irregular lines and sealed with common blackish-brown sealing wax.
“Vera!” he said in a low voice. She shrank back with such obvious terror that he too trembled, then quickly put the letter in her pocket.
They looked at one another without stirring.
“You are busy. Excuse my coming,” he said, and took a step backward, as if to leave her.