‘I? a bad opinion of you!…’
‘Why is it you are both so low-spirited,’ Gagin interrupted me—‘would you like me to play a waltz, as I did yesterday?’
‘No, no,’ replied Acia, and she clenched her hands; ‘not to-day, not for anything!’
‘I’m not going to force you to; don’t excite yourself.’
‘Not for anything!’ she repeated, turning pale.
‘Can it be she’s in love with me?’ I thought, as I drew near the dark rushing waters of the Rhine.
XIII
‘Can it be that she loves me?’ I asked myself next morning, directly I awoke. I did not want to look into myself. I felt that her image, the image of the ‘girl with the affected laugh,’ had crept close into my heart, and that I should not easily get rid of it. I went to L—— and stayed there the whole day, but I saw Acia only by glimpses. She was not well; she had a headache. She came downstairs for a minute, with a bandage round her forehead, looking white and thin, her eyes half-closed. With a faint smile she said, ‘It will soon be over, it’s nothing; everything’s soon over, isn’t it?’ and went away. I felt bored and, as it were, listlessly sad, yet I could not make up my mind to go for a long while, and went home late, without seeing her again.