Well, I won’t tell you what my impression of The Barber of Seville was. I’ll merely mention that our lodger looked at me so nicely the whole evening, and he spoke so nicely to me that I guessed at once that he had only meant to try me out in the afternoon, to see whether I would have gone with him alone. Oh, I was so happy! I went to bed feeling so proud, so gay, and my heart was beating so fast that I felt a little feverish and raved all night about The Barber of Seville.

“I thought he’d come and see us more and more often after that, but it turned out quite differently. He almost stopped coming altogether. He’d come down once a month, perhaps, and even then only to invite us to the theatre. We went twice to the theatre with him. Only I wasn’t a bit happy about it. I could see that he was simply sorry for me because I was treated so abominably by my grandmother, and that otherwise he wasn’t interested in me at all. So it went on till I couldn’t bear it any longer: I couldn’t sit still for a minute, I couldn’t read anything, I couldn’t work. Sometimes I’d burst out laughing and do something just to annoy Granny, and sometimes I’d just burst into tears. In the end I got terribly thin and was nearly ill. The opera season was over, and our lodger stopped coming down to see us altogether, and when we did meet—always on the stairs, of course—he’d just bow to me silently, and look very serious as though he did not want to talk to me, and he’d be out on the front steps while I’d still be standing half way up the stairs, red as a cherry, for every time I met him all my blood rushed to my head.

“Well, I’ve almost finished. Just a year ago, in May, our lodger came down to our drawing-room and told Granny that he had finished his business in Petersburg and was leaving for Moscow where he would have to stay a whole year. When I heard that I went pale and sank back in my chair as though in a faint. Granny did not notice anything, and he, having told us that he was giving up his room, took his leave and went away.

“What was I to do? I thought and thought, worried and worried, and at last I made up my mind. As he was leaving tomorrow, I decided to make an end to it all after Granny had gone to bed. I tied up all my clothes in a bundle and, more dead than alive, went upstairs with my bundle to see our lodger. I suppose it must have taken me a whole hour to walk up the stairs to the attic. When I opened the door of his room, he cried out as he looked at me. He thought I was a ghost. He quickly fetched a glass of water for me, for I could hardly stand on my feet. My heart was beating very fast, my head ached terribly, and I felt all in a daze. When I recovered a little, I just put my bundle on his bed, sat down beside it, buried my face in my hands, and burst into a flood of tears. He seemed to have understood everything at once, and he stood before me looking so pale and gazing at me so sadly that my heart nearly broke.

“ ‘Listen, Nastenka,’ he said, ‘I can’t do anything now. I’m a poor man. I haven’t got anything at present, not even a decent job. How would we live, if I were to marry you?’

“We talked for a long time, and in the end I worked myself up into a real frenzy and told him that I couldn’t go on living with my grandmother any more, that I’d run away from her, that I didn’t want to be fastened by a pin all my life, and that, if he liked, I’d go to Moscow with him because I couldn’t live without him. Shame, love, pride seemed to speak in me all at once, and I fell on the bed almost in convulsions. I was so afraid that he might refuse to take me!

“He sat in silence for a few minutes, then he got up, went to me, and took me by the hand.

“ ‘Listen to me, darling Nastenka,’ he began, also speaking through his tears, ‘I promise you solemnly that if at any time I am in a position to marry, you are the only girl in the world I would marry. I assure you that now you are the only one who could make me happy.