And again an abyss opened before me. Everything trembled, everything fell, everything became an absurd dream, and in the last effort to save my extinguishing reason I shouted:
“But you are happy! You cannot be unhappy; you have no right to be unhappy! Otherwise I shall lose my mind.”
But she did not understand. With a bitter laugh, with a senseless smile, in which her suffering mingled with bright, heavenly joy, she said:
“I am happy! I—happy! Oh, my friend, only near you I can find happiness. From the moment you left the prison I began to despise my home. I am alone there; I am a stranger to all. If you only knew how I hate that scoundrel! You are sensible; you must have felt that you were not alone in prison, that I was always with you there—”
“And he?”
“Be silent! Be silent! If you only heard with what delight I called him scoundrel!”
She burst into laughter, frightening me by the wild expression on her face.
“Just think of it! All his life he embraced only a lie. And when, deceived, happy, he fell asleep, I looked at him with wide-open eyes, I gnashed my teeth softly, and I felt like pinching him, like sticking him with a pin.”
She burst into laughter again. It seemed to me that she was driving wedges into my brain. Clasping my head, I cried:
“You lie! You lie to me!”