“Go!” he sternly commanded. But Nastya did not move and with the same queerly candid expression she kept on gazing straight into her father’s eyes. And her face no longer resembled the repulsive mask of the idiot.
“But you never think of me,” she observed simply, as though expressing an abstract truth.
And then, in the gathering gloom of the wintry dusk, there occurred between these two—who were so like, yet so unlike one another—a brief and curious dialog:
“You are my daughter. Why did I know nothing about it? Do you know?”
“No.”
“Come and kiss me.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Don’t you love me?”
“No, I love nobody.”
“Even as I,” and the priest’s nostrils extended with repressed laughter.