God knows how to judge here, but most likely nothing was awakening in Varvara Petrovna's heart that could fully have justified Stepan Trofimovich's suspicions. And she would not have exchanged her name of Stavrogin for his name, however glorious it might be. Perhaps it was only a feminine game on her part, the manifestation of an unconscious feminine need, so natural on certain extraordinary feminine occasions. However, I would not vouch for it; inscrutable even to this day are the depths of the feminine heart. But, to continue.

One may suppose that within herself she soon understood the strange expression on her friend's face; she was alert and observant, whereas he was sometimes too innocent. But the evenings went on as before, and the conversations were as poetic and interesting. And then once, as night was falling, after a most animated and poetic conversation, they parted in a friendly manner, warmly shaking hands at the porch of the cottage Stepan Trofimovich occupied. Every summer he moved from the huge manor house of Skvoreshniki to this little cottage which stood almost in the garden. He had just walked into his room and, having taken a cigar, before he managed to light it, troubled by thoughts, had stopped, weary and motionless, by the open window, observing some white clouds, light as down, gliding past the bright crescent moon, when suddenly a faint rustle made him start and turn around. Varvara Petrovna, whom he had left only four minutes earlier, was again standing before him. Her yellow face was almost blue, her lips were pressed together and twitched at the corners. For a full ten seconds she looked silently into his eyes with a firm, implacable gaze, and then suddenly whispered rapidly:

"I will never forgive you for that!"

When, ten years later, Stepan Trofimovich told me this sad story in a whisper, having locked the door first, he swore he had been so dumbfounded then and there that he had not heard or seen how Varvara Petrovna disappeared. Since she never once alluded afterwards to what had taken place, and everything went on as if nothing had happened, he was inclined all his life to think it was just a hallucination before illness, all the more so as he actually did fall ill that same night for two whole weeks—which, incidentally, also put an end to the meetings in the gazebo.

But despite his fancy about the hallucination, he seemed every day of his life to be waiting for the sequel and, so to speak, the denouement of this event. He did not believe it could have ended just like that! And if so, what strange looks he must sometimes have given his friend. V

She herself even invented a costume for him, in which he went about all his life. It was an elegant and characteristic costume: a long-skirted black frock coat, buttoned almost to the top, but with a dapper look; a soft hat (a straw one for summer) with a wide brim; a white batiste cravat with a big knot and hanging ends; a cane with a silver knob; and shoulder-length hair to go with it all. His hair was dark brown and only recently had begun to go a bit gray. He shaved his beard and moustache. He was said to have been extremely handsome as a young man. But, in my opinion, as an old man he was also remarkably imposing. And how old is fifty-three? Still, out of a certain civic coquetry, he not only did not try to look younger, but seemed to flaunt the solidity of his years, and in his costume, tall, lean, with hair falling to his shoulders, he resembled a patriarch, as it were, or, more precisely, the portrait of the poet Kukolnik12 in a lithograph from some edition of the thirties, especially when he sat in the garden in summer, on a bench, under a flowering lilac bush, leaning

DEMONS

Part One

with both hands on his cane, an open book beside him, poetically pondering the sunset. Speaking of books, I will note that towards the end he began somehow to withdraw from reading. That, however, was towards the very end. The newspapers and magazines Varvara Petrovna subscribed to in great numbers, he read constantly. He was also constantly interested in the successes of Russian literature, though without in the least losing his dignity. At some point he became involved in a study of the higher modern politics of our internal and external affairs, but soon abandoned the enterprise with a wave of the hand. And there was this, too: he would take Tocqueville with him to the garden, but with Paul de Kock tucked in his side pocket.' 13 That, however, is a trifle. I will also note parenthetically about Kukolnik's portrait, that Varvara Petrovna had first chanced upon this picture while still a young girl at an upper-class boarding school in Moscow.