“Why do we keep up this tormenting game? You are Elizavieta—I am sure of it. You can’t forget how you once loved me. And of course you can’t forget how basely I cast you off. But now I bring you all my soul’s repentance. I despise myself for my former conduct. This is what I propose: take me for the whole of my life if you can forgive me. But I say this to Elizavieta, I give myself to her, not to any other woman.”
Mme. Sadikova listened in silence to this little speech, transgressing as it did the limits of Society small-talk, and answered calmly—
“Dear Peter Andreyevitch. If you are speaking to me I might answer you, perhaps, but as you warn me that you are speaking to Elizavieta there’s nothing for me to say.”
In the greatest excitement Basmanof got up from his seat and asked her:
“Do you wish to insist that you are not Elizavieta? Well, say so once more to my face without blenching and I will go away, I will at once hide myself from your eyes, I will vanish out of your life. Then there will be no more reason for my living.”
Mme. Sadikova smiled sweetly.
“Do you wish so much that I were Elizavieta?” asked she. “Very well, I will be Elizavieta.”
IV
Then the second game began, a more cruel one perhaps than the first. Mme. Sadikova called herself Elizavieta and treated Basmanof as an old acquaintance. When he spoke of the past she pretended to remember the persons and events of which he spoke. When he, all trembling, reminded her of her love for him, she, laughing, agreed that she had loved him; but she hinted that in the course of time this love had died down, as every flame dies down.
In order to play her part conscientiously, Mme. Sadikova herself would sometimes speak of the happenings of the past, but she mixed up the dates, remembered the wrong names, imagined things which had never occurred. It was especially tormenting that when she spoke of her love for Basmanof she referred to it as to a light flirtation, the accidental amusement of a lady in society. This seemed to Basmanof an insult to sacred things, and almost with a wail he besought her to be silent.