"Well"--Lensky gasps the words more than speaks them--"I was like a wild animal. She cried for help. I heard some one come, fortunately for her. And I was as frightened as a thief, and left. Now, have you heard enough?" he fairly screams, and stamps on the floor.
Lensky is silent. Nikolai's face is ashy, as that of a man whose heart has ceased beating with horror.
"Now I know why she shrank from me," says he, dully, without looking at his father. Then he leaves him.
XXV.
At the same hour Maschenka stands before the clock in her room and counts the strokes--"One, two, three, four, five. It must be now," says she to herself. "It must be now."
It must be. Slowly but surely and overpoweringly has the conviction mastered her. At first it was only an uneasy anxiety, but then an iron command.
She has fought against it with all the wild, rebellious horror which a very young person feels at the thought of death. She will not--she will not! But at length despair and a daily increasing weariness have strengthened the decision. "Yes, it must be."
How shall she accomplish it? Poison? No; she will go out of the world some way so that no one shall ever find her who knew her. And in the short spring nights she matures a plan, slyly carried out as only such a romantic little brain could think of.
All is ready.
She has granted herself the respite until her father's return, and for this reason she is frightened instead of pleased to see him again. It seemed to her that the executioner appeared to her and said: "Come, it is time!"