‘Good God,’ she said, ‘Grigory Mihalitch, what does it mean? is it a dream or what? You give up Tanya, you tired of her, you breaking your word! You doing this, Grigory Mihalitch, you on whom we all counted as if you were a stone wall! You? you? you, Grisha?’... Kapitolina Markovna stopped. ‘Why, you will kill her, Grigory Mihalitch,’ she went on, without waiting for an answer, while her tears fairly coursed in fine drops over her cheeks. ‘You mustn’t judge by her bearing up now, you know her character! She never complains; she does not think of herself, so others must think of her! She keeps saying to me, “Aunt, we must save our dignity!” but what’s dignity, when I foresee death, death before us?’... Tatyana’s chair creaked in the next room. ‘Yes, I foresee death,’ the old lady went on still more softly. ‘And how can such a thing have come about? Is it witchcraft, or what? It’s not long since you were writing her the tenderest letters. And in fact can an honest man act like this? I’m a woman, free, as you know, from prejudice of any sort, esprit fort, and I have given Tanya too the same sort of education, she too has a free mind....’
‘Aunt!’ came Tatyana’s voice from the next room.
‘But one’s word of honour is a duty, Grigory Mihalitch, especially for people of your, of my principles! If we’re not going to recognise duty, what is left us? This cannot be broken off in this way, at your whim, without regard to what may happen to another! It’s unprincipled ... yes, it’s a crime; a strange sort of freedom!’
‘Aunt, come here please,’ was heard again.
‘I’m coming, my love, I’m coming....’ Kapitolina Markovna clutched at Litvinov’s hand.—‘I see you are angry, Grigory Mihalitch.’... (‘Me! me angry?’ he wanted to exclaim, but his tongue was dumb.) ‘I don’t want to make you angry—oh, really, quite the contrary! I’ve come even to entreat you; think again while there is time; don’t destroy her, don’t destroy your own happiness, she will still trust you, Grisha, she will believe in you, nothing is lost yet; why, she loves you as no one will ever love you! Leave this hateful Baden-Baden, let us go away together, only throw off this enchantment, and, above all, have pity, have pity——’
‘Aunt!’ called Tatyana, with a shade of impatience in her voice.
But Kapitolina Markovna did not hear her.
‘Only say “yes,”’ she repeated to Litvinov; ‘and I will still make everything smooth.... You need only nod your head to me, just one little nod like this.’
Litvinov would gladly, he felt, have died at that instant; but the word ‘yes’ he did not utter, and he did not nod his head.
Tatyana reappeared with a letter in her hand. Kapitolina Markovna at once darted away from Litvinov, and, averting her face, bent low over the table, as though she were looking over the bills and papers that lay on it.