The colour rushed to Rudin’s face. Natalya’s unexpected energy had astounded him; but her last words wounded his vanity.
‘You are too angry now, Natalya Alexyevna,’ he began; ‘you cannot realise how bitterly you wound me. I hope that in time you will do me justice; you will understand what it has cost me to renounce the happiness which you have said yourself would have laid upon me no obligations. Your peace is dearer to me than anything in the world, and I should have been the basest of men, if I could have taken advantage——’
‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ interrupted Natalya, ‘perhaps you are right; I don’t know what I am saying. But up to this time I believed in you, believed in every word you said.... For the future, pray keep a watch upon your words, do not fling them about at hazard. When I said to you, “I love you,” I knew what that word meant; I was ready for everything.... Now I have only to thank you for a lesson—and to say good-bye.’
‘Stop, for God’s sake, Natalya Alexyevna, I beseech you. I do not deserve your contempt, I swear to you. Put yourself in my position. I am responsible for you and for myself. If I did not love you with the most devoted love—why, good God! I should have at once proposed you should run away with me.... Sooner or later your mother would forgive us—and then... But before thinking of my own happiness——’
He stopped. Natalya’s eyes fastened directly upon him put him to confusion.
‘You try to prove to me that you are an honourable man, Dmitri Nikolaitch,’ she said. ‘I do not doubt that. You are not capable of acting from calculation; but did I want to be convinced of that? did I come here for that?’
‘I did not expect, Natalya Alexyevna——’
‘Ah! you have said it at last! Yes, you did not expect all this—you did not know me. Do not be uneasy... you do not love me, and I will never force myself on any one.’
‘I love you!’ cried Rudin.
Natalya drew herself up.