“You thought of me,” said Tushin, standing up. “Tushin, you thought, would do you this service, and then you sent for me.” Pride, joy, and affection shone in his eyes.
“No, Ivan Ivanovich. I sent for you, so that you might be at my side in these difficult hours. I am calmer when you are here. But I will not send you—down there, I will not inflict on you this last insult, will not set you face to face with a man, who cannot be an object of indifference to you—no, no.”
Tushin was about to speak, but instead he stretched out his hands in silence, and Vera looked at him with mixed feelings of gratitude and sorrow, as she realised with what small things he was made happy.
“Insult!” he said. “It would have been hard to bear if you were to send me to him with an olive branch, to bring him up here from the depths of the precipice. But even though that dove-like errand would not suit me, I would still undertake it to give you peace, if I thought it would make you happy.”
“Ivan Ivanovich,” replied Vera, hardly restraining her tears, “I believe you would have done it, but I would never send you.”
“But now I am not asked to go outside my rôle of Bear; to tell him what you cannot write to him, Vera Vassilievna, would give me happiness.”
She reflected that this was all the happiness with which she had to reward him, and dropped her eyes. His mood changed when he noticed her thoughtful, melancholy air; his proud bearing, the gleam in his eyes, and the colour in his face disappeared. He regretted his incautious display of pleasure. It seemed to him that his delight and his mention of the word “happiness!” had been tantamount to a renewal of his profession of love and the offer of his hand, and had betrayed to her the fact that he rejoiced selfishly at her breach with Mark.
Vera guessed that he was deceiving himself once more. Her heart, her feminine instinct, her friendship, these things prevented Tushin from abandoning his hope; she gave what she could, an unconditional trust and a boundless esteem.
“Yes, Ivan Ivanovich, I see now that I have placed my hopes on you, though I did not confess it to myself, and no one would have persuaded me to ask this service of you. But since you make the generous offer yourself, I am delighted, and thank you with all my heart. No one can help me as you do, because no one else loves me as you do.”
“You spoil me, Vera Vassilievna, when you talk like that. But it is true; you read my very soul.”