Irina slowly shuddered, and slowly dropped her hands.
‘Why did you not come up to me?’ she whispered.
‘Why ... why!’ Litvinov moved on one side, away from the path, Irina followed him in silence. ‘Why?’ he repeated once more, and suddenly his face was aflame, and he felt his chest and throat choking with a passion akin to hatred. ‘You ... you ask such a question, after all that has passed between us? Not now, of course, not now; but there ... there ... in Moscow.’
‘But, you know, we decided; you know, you promised——’ Irina was beginning.
‘I have promised nothing! Pardon the harshness of my expressions, but you ask for the truth—so think for yourself: to what but a caprice—incomprehensible, I confess, to me—to what but a desire to try how much power you still have over me, can I attribute your ... I don’t know what to call it ... your persistence? Our paths have lain so far apart! I have forgotten it all, I’ve lived through all that suffering long ago, I’ve become a different man completely; you are married—happy, at least, in appearance—you fill an envied position in the world; what’s the object, what’s the use of our meeting? What am I to you? what are you to me? We cannot even understand each other now; there is absolutely nothing in common between us now, neither in the past nor in the present! Especially ... especially in the past!’
Litvinov uttered all this speech hurriedly, jerkily, without turning his head. Irina did not stir, except from time to time she faintly stretched her hands out to him. It seemed as though she were beseeching him to stop and listen to her, while, at his last words, she slightly bit her lower lip, as though to master the pain of a sharp, rapid wound.
‘Grigory Mihalitch,’ she began at last, in a calmer voice; and she moved still further away from the path, along which people from time to time passed.
Litvinov in his turn followed her.
‘Grigory Mihalitch, believe me, if I could imagine I had one hair’s-breadth of power over you left, I would be the first to avoid you. If I have not done so, if I made up my mind, in spite of my ... of the wrong I did you in the past, to renew my acquaintance with you, it was because ... because——’
‘Because what?’ asked Litvinov, almost rudely.