Lezhnyov stopped; his colourless face was flushed.
‘And what was the cause of your quarrel with Rudin?’ said Alexandra Pavlovna, looking wonderingly at Lezhnyov.
‘I did not quarrel with him, but I parted from him when I came to know him thoroughly abroad. But I might well have quarrelled with him in Moscow, he did me a bad turn there.’
‘What was that?’
‘It was like this. I—how can I tell you?—it does not accord very well with my appearance, but I was always much given to falling in love.’
‘You?’
‘Yes, I was indeed. That’s a curious idea, isn’t it? But, anyway, it was so. Well, so I fell in love in those days with a very pretty young girl.... But why do you look at me like that? I could tell you something about myself a great deal more extraordinary than that!’
‘And what is that something, if I may know?’
‘Oh, just this. In those Moscow days I used to have a tryst at nights—with whom, would you imagine? with a young lime-tree at the bottom of my garden. I used to embrace its slender and graceful trunk, and I felt as though I were embracing all nature, and my heart melted and expanded as though it really were taking in the whole of nature. That’s what I was then. And do you think, perhaps, I didn’t write verses? Why, I even composed a whole drama in imitation of Manfred. Among the characters was a ghost with blood on his breast, and not his own blood, observe, but the blood of all humanity.... Yes, yes, you need not wonder at that. But I was beginning to tell you about my love affair. I made the acquaintance of a girl——’
‘And you gave up your trysts with the lime-tree?’ inquired Alexandra Pavlovna.