"Why--I wish to know it--why?"
"Why? Good. I will tell you, as far as one can tell you--because he is a wild animal, with bursts of roughness of which you cannot form the slightest conception," said Assanow; and, striking his thin hands together, he added, with evidently genuine excitement: "Mais, ma pauvre fille, you have no suspicion to what humiliations, what degradations, you expose yourself."
He stopped. He looked at his sister triumphantly. She still stood before him with her hand resting on the top of the table, staring, pale and without a word. It would be false, to say that his speech made no impression on her. It had made an impression on her. Still, she ascribed all that he said to boundless, passionate opposition. While he spoke it seemed to her as if little pointed icicles were hurled in her face. And weary and wounded from this hailstorm of fruitless prudence, she longed with all her heart for a reconciling delusion.
He misunderstood her apparently great excitement, and in the firm conviction that she already secretly began to fall in with his opinion, he began, this time in a kindly, playful tone: "My poor Natalie, my poor, unwise but always charming sister, you are like children who see that they are wrong and are ashamed to acknowledge it. Well, we will not press you too much. At first it is always painful to be undeceived; but time cures everything, and when you are married to a distinguished and reasonable young fellow--un garçon distingué et raisonnable--who will rationally cure you of your romantic ideas, you will only think of this youthful foolishness with a smile."
She threw back her head and measured him from head to foot. At this moment he seemed to her quite pitiable. How poverty-stricken, how sad was his whole inner life, his feelings, his thoughts, to those to which she had recently accustomed herself! "And you really believe that it could occur to me to give up Boris Nikolaivitch?" said she slowly with proudly curved lips.
"I think, after what I have said to you--" He tried to be patient, and even wished to take her hand, but she drew it back; the touch of his cold, bloodless fingers was unpleasant to her. Yet it had never been so before. What had changed in her?
The prince's face took on a hard, vexed expression. "I think after what I have told you--" he repeated.
"Is it not true, after what you have told me, after the consolation you have offered me, you cannot understand that I keep my word?" said she, challengingly. "What will you, I am now so foolish?" Her voice, veiled at first, became warmer and stronger, while she continued: "You take away summer from me, and offer me winter as consolation--that is, you ask of me that I should refuse everything in the world that blooms and bears fruit, only because sometimes a devastating thunderstorm bursts over this wealth of beauty and life! I know that in a normal winter there are no thunderstorms, and in spite of that I prefer the summer!"
"But it is a tropical summer!" exclaimed Assanow.
"That may be," she replied, calmly; "but for that very reason it is more magnificent--yes, even because of the dangers involved in it--more magnificent than any other."