“Don’t leave me in the dark, Vera Vassilievna. You must have had some reason for confiding your secret to me.”
“You looked at me so strangely to-day that I could not understand your meaning, and thought you must already be informed of all that had happened and could not rest until I knew what was in your mind. I was too hasty, but it comes to the same thing, for sooner or later I should have told you. Sit down, and hear what I have to say, and then have done with me.” She explained the situation to him in a few words.
“So you forgive him,” he asked, after a moment’s thought.
“Forgive him, of course. I tell you that I alone am guilty.”
“Have you separated from him, or do you hope for his return?”
“There is nothing whatever in common between us, and we shall never see one another again.”
“Now, I understand a little, for the first time, but still not everything,” said Tushin, sighing bitterly. “I thought you had been vulgarly betrayed, and, since you called me to your help, I imagined that the time had come for the Bear to do his duty. I was on the point of rendering you the service of a Bear, and it was for that reason that I permitted myself to ask boldly for the man’s name. Forgive me, and now tell me why you have revealed the story to me.”
“Because I was not willing that you should think better of me than I deserve, and esteem me....”
“But how would you accomplish that? I shall not cease to think of you as I have always thought of you, and I cannot do otherwise than respect you.”
A gleam of pleasure lighted her eyes, only to be immediately extinguished. “You want to restore my self-esteem,” she said, “because you are good and generous. You are sorry for a poor unfortunate girl and want to raise her up again. I understand your generosity, Ivan Ivanovich, but I will have none of it.”