She seized my hand.
Princess Ligovski was walking in front of us with Vera’s husband, and had not seen anything; but we might have been observed by some of the invalids who were strolling about—the most inquisitive gossips of all inquisitive folk—and I rapidly disengaged my hand from her passionate pressure.
“I will tell you the whole truth,” I answered. “I will not justify myself, nor explain my actions: I do not love you.”
Her lips grew slightly pale.
“Leave me,” she said, in a scarcely audible voice.
I shrugged my shoulders, turned round, and walked away.
CHAPTER XVI. 25th June.
I SOMETIMES despise myself... Is not that the reason why I despise others also?... I have grown incapable of noble impulses; I am afraid of appearing ridiculous to myself. In my place, another would have offered Princess Mary son coeur et sa fortune; but over me the word “marry” has a kind of magical power. However passionately I love a woman, if she only gives me to feel that I have to marry her—then farewell, love! My heart is turned to stone, and nothing will warm it anew. I am prepared for any other sacrifice but that; my life twenty times over, nay, my honour I would stake on the fortune of a card... but my freedom I will never sell. Why do I prize it so highly? What is there in it to me? For what am I preparing myself? What do I hope for from the future?... In truth, absolutely nothing. It is a kind of innate dread, an inexplicable prejudice... There are people, you know, who have an unaccountable dread of spiders, beetles, mice... Shall I confess it? When I was but a child, a certain old woman told my fortune to my mother. She predicted for me death from a wicked wife. I was profoundly struck by her words at the time: an irresistible repugnance to marriage was born within my soul... Meanwhile, something tells me that her prediction will be realized; I will try, at all events, to arrange that it shall be realized as late in life as possible.