I flung up my hands. ‘Baburin—and you! Why, he must be fifty!’
‘He says forty-three. But that makes no difference. If he were five—and—twenty I wouldn’t marry him. Much happiness I should find in it! A whole week will go by without his smiling once! Paramon Semyonitch is my benefactor, I am deeply indebted to him; he took care of me, educated me; I should have been utterly lost but for him; I’m bound to look on him as a father.... But be his wife! I’d rather die! I’d rather be in my coffin!’
‘Why do you keep talking about death, Musa Pavlovna?’
Musa stopped again.
‘Why, is life so sweet, then? Even your friend Vladimir Nikolaitch, I may say, I’ve come to love from being wretched and dull: and then Paramon Semyonitch with his offers of marriage.... Punin, though he bores me with his verses, he doesn’t scare me, anyway; he doesn’t make me read Karamzin in the evenings, when my head’s ready to drop off my shoulders for weariness! And what are these old men to me? They call me cold, too. With them, is it likely I should be warm? If they try to make me—I shall go. Paramon Semyonitch himself’s always saying: Freedom! freedom! All right, I want freedom too. Or else it comes to this! Freedom for every one else, and keeping me in a cage! I’ll tell him so myself. But if you betray me, or drop a hint—remember; they’ll never set eyes on me again!’
Musa stood in the middle of the path.
‘They’ll never set eyes on me again!’ she repeated sharply. This time, too, she did not raise her eyes to me; she seemed to be aware that she would infallibly betray herself, would show what was in her heart, if any one looked her straight in the face.... And that was just why she did not lift her eyes, except when she was angry or annoyed, and then she stared straight at the person she was speaking to.... But her small pretty face was aglow with indomitable resolution.
‘Why, Tarhov was right,’ flashed through my head; ‘this girl is a new type.’
‘You’ve no need to be afraid of me,’ I declared, at last.
‘Truly? Even, if ... You said something about our relations.... But even if there were ...’ she broke off.