“Why,” he said sadly, and came nearer.
She thought for a moment, drew out another letter, glanced through it, carefully scratching out a word or a line here and there, and handed it to him.
“Read that letter,” she said, again slipping her hand into her pocket.
He began to read the delicate handwriting: “I am sorry, dear Natasha,” and then asked, “Who is Natasha?”
“The priest’s wife, my school friend.”
“Ah! the pope’s wife. It is your own letter. That is interesting,” and he became absorbed in the reading.
“I am sorry, dear Natasha,” the letter ran, “that I have not written to you since my return. As usual I have been idle, but I had other reasons, which you shall learn. The chief reason you already know (here some words were scratched out), which agitates me very much. But of that we will speak when we meet.
“The other reason is the arrival of our relative, Boris Pavlovich Raisky. For my misfortune he scarcely ever leaves the house, so that for a fortnight I did hardly anything except hide from him. What an abundance of reason, of different kinds of knowledge, of brilliance, of talent he brought with him, and with it all what unrest. He upsets the whole household. He had hardly arrived before he was seized with the firm conviction that not only the estate, but all that lived on it, were his property. Taking his stand on a relationship, which hardly deserves the name, and on the fact that he knew us when we were little, he treated us as if we were children or schoolgirls. Although I have hidden myself from him, I have only just succeeded in preventing him from seeing how I sleep and dream, and what I hope and wait for.
“This pursuit has almost made me ill, and I have seen no one, written to no one. I feel like a prisoner. It is as if he were playing with me, perhaps quite against his own will. One day he is cold and indifferent, the next his eyes are ablaze, and I fear him as I would a madman. The worst of all seems to me to be that he does not know himself, so that no reliance can be placed on his plans and promises; he decides on one course, and the next day takes another. He himself says he is nervous, susceptible and passionate, and he may be right. He is no play actor, and does not disguise himself; he is, I think, too sensible and well-bred, indeed, too honest, for that.
“He is by way of being an artist, draws, writes, improvises very nicely on the piano, and dreams of art. Yet it seems to me that he does substantially nothing, but is spending his life, as he says, in the adoration of beauty; he is a lover by temperament, like (do you remember?) Dashenka Sfemechkin, who fell in love with a Spanish prince, whose portrait she had seen in a German calendar, and would admit no one, not even the piano-tuner, Kish. But Boris Pavlovich is full of kindness and honour, is upright, gay, original, but all these qualities are so disconnected and uncertain in their expression that we don’t know what to make of them. Now he seeks my friendship, but I am afraid of him, am afraid he may do anything, am afraid (here some lines were crossed out). Ah, if only he would go away. It is terrible to think he may one day (here again words were crossed out).