I went over to him. Assja rose and left the room.
An hour afterward she returned, stood in the doorway, and beckoned to me.
"Listen," she said. "Would you be sorry if I died?"
"What ideas you have to-day!" I exclaimed.
"I imagine that I shall die soon. Sometimes it seems to me as if everything about me was taking leave of me. It is better to die than to live as—— Ah, don't look at me so. Indeed I am not a hypocrite. I shall be afraid of you again."
"Have you ever been afraid of me?"
"If I am unlike other people, the fault is not mine," she answered. "Already, you see, I cannot laugh any more."
She was melancholy and depressed until evening. Something was passing in her that I could not understand. Her eyes often rested on me, and every time they did so I felt my heart chilled by their strange expression. She was quiet—and yet whenever I looked at her it seemed to me that I must beg her to be calm. Her appearance fascinated me; I found the greatest charm in her pale features, in her slow, aimless movements; but she fancied—I do not know why—that I was in ill humor.
"Listen," she said to me a little while before my departure. "The thought haunts me that you think me frivolous. In future you must believe everything that I tell you, and you must be frank with me. I will always tell you the truth, I give you my word of honor."