She asked herself: had she acted well in refusing a man only because she did not like his looks? True, this was a man she did not love, and to marry him would mean saying good-bye forever to her dreams, her notions of happiness and married life, but would she ever meet the man she was dreaming of and fall in love with him? She was already twenty-one years old. There were no suitors in town. She pictured to herself all the men she knew—officials, teachers, officers—and some were already married, and their family life struck her as empty and boring, and the others were uninteresting, colorless, unintelligent, immoral. Laptev, whatever else he was, was a Muscovite, he had finished the university, he spoke French; he lived in the capital, where there were many intelligent, noble, remarkable people, where there was noise, splendid theaters, musical evenings, excellent dressmakers, confectioners... It was said in the Holy Scriptures that a wife should love her husband, and in novels love was given enormous significance, but was there not some exaggeration in that? Was family life really impossible without love? Yet they say love soon passes and only habit remains, and that the very goal of family life lies not in love, not in happiness, but in responsibilities, for instance, in bringing up children, taking care of the household, and so on. And the Holy Scriptures may have in mind love for one’s husband as for a neighbor, respect for him, tolerance.
That night Yulia Sergeevna attentively read the evening prayers, then knelt and, pressing her hands to her breast, looking at the light of the icon lamp, said with feeling:
‘‘Grant me wisdom, Mother of God! Grant me wisdom, Lord!’’
During her life she had happened to meet old maids, poor and insignificant, who bitterly repented and expressed regret that they had once rejected their suitors. Might not the same thing happen to her? Should she not go to a convent or become a sister of mercy?
She undressed and went to bed, crossing herself and crossing the air around her. Suddenly the bell in the corridor rang sharply and plaintively.
‘‘Ah, my God!’’ she said, feeling a painful irritation all over her body from the ringing. She lay and went on thinking how poor in events this provincial life was, how monotonous and at the same time restless. One kept shuddering, being apprehensive of something, feeling angry or guilty, and in the end one’s nerves became upset to such a degree that it was frightening to peek out from under the blanket.
Half an hour later, the bell rang again, as sharply as the first time. It must be that the maid was asleep and did not hear it. Yulia Sergeevna lighted a candle and, trembling, vexed with the maid, began to dress, and when, having dressed, she went out to the corridor, the maid was already locking the door downstairs.
‘‘I thought it was the master, but it was someone sent from a patient,’’ she said.
Yulia Sergeevna went back to her room. She took a pack of cards from the chest of drawers and decided that if she shuffled the cards well and then cut them, and if the card on the bottom was red, it would mean yes, that is, she ought to accept Laptev’s proposal, but if it was black, it meant no. The card was the ten of spades.
That set her at ease, she fell asleep, but in the morning it was again neither yes nor no, and she thought that if she wished, she could now change her life. The thinking wearied her, she languished and felt ill, but all the same, shortly after eleven o’clock, she got dressed and went to visit Nina Fyodorovna. She wanted to see Laptev: maybe now he would seem better to her; maybe she had been mistaken all the while...
It was hard for her to walk against the wind; she inched along, holding her hat with both hands, and could see nothing because of the dust.
IV
GOING INTO HIS sister’s room and unexpectedly seeing Yulia Sergeevna, Laptev again experienced the humiliating condition of a man who inspires revulsion. He concluded that if, after what had happened yesterday, she could so easily visit his sister and meet him, it meant she did not notice him, or considered him a total nonentity. But when he greeted her, she, pale, with dust under her eyes, looked at him sadly and guiltily; he realized that she, too, was suffering.
She was unwell. She stayed a very short time, about ten minutes, and began saying good-bye. And, going out, she said to Laptev:
‘‘See me home, Alexei Fyodorych.’’
They walked down the street in silence, holding their hats, and he, walking behind, tried to shield her from the wind. In the lane, it was quieter, and here they walked side by side.
‘‘If I was unfeeling yesterday, forgive me,’’ she began, and her voice trembled as if she was about to cry. ‘‘This is so tormenting! I didn’t sleep all night.’’
‘‘And I slept splendidly all night,’’ Laptev said without looking at her, ‘‘but that doesn’t mean I’m well. My life is broken, I’m deeply unhappy, and after your refusal yesterday, I walk around as if I’ve been poisoned. The hardest part was said yesterday, today I feel no constraint with you and can speak directly. I love you more than my sister, more than my late mother... I can and have lived without my sister and my mother, but to live without you—it’s senseless for me, I can’t...’
And now, as usual, he guessed her intention. It was clear to him that she wanted to continue yesterday’s talk and had asked him to accompany her only for that, and now she was leading him to her home. But what more could she add to her refusal? What new thing had she thought up? By everything, by her glances, by her smile, and even by the way she held her head and shoulders as she walked beside him, he could see that she still did not love him, that he was a stranger to her. What more did she want to say?
Dr. Sergei Borisych was at home.
‘‘Welcome, Fyodor Alexeich, very glad to see you,’’ he said, confusing his name and patronymic. ‘‘Very, very glad.’’
Before, he had not been so cordial, and Laptev concluded that the doctor already knew about his proposal; and he did not like that. He was now sitting in the drawing room, and this room made a strange impression, with its poor bourgeois furnishings, its bad paintings, and though there were armchairs in it and an enormous lamp with a lamp shade, it still resembled an uninhabited space, a roomy barn, and it was obvious that only such a man as the doctor could feel at home there; the other room, nearly twice bigger, was called the reception hall, and here there were only straight chairs, as in a dancing school. And Laptev, as he sat in the drawing room and talked with the doctor about his sister, began to be tormented by a certain suspicion. What if Yulia Sergeevna had visited his sister, Nina, and then brought him here in order to announce to him that she accepted his proposal? Oh, how terrible that would be, but most terrible of all was that his soul was accessible to such suspicions. He pictured to himself how yesterday evening and night the father and daughter had discussed it for a long time, maybe argued for a long time, and then come to an agreement that Yulia had acted light-mindedly in refusing a rich man. Even the words parents speak on such occasions rang in his ears:
‘‘True, you don’t love him, but then think how much good you can do!’’
The doctor was about to go on his sick rounds. Laptev wanted to leave with him, but Yulia Sergeevna said:
‘‘No, please stay.’’
She was tormented, dispirited, and was now persuading herself that to refuse a decent, kind, loving man only because she did not like him, especially when this marriage would present an opportunity to change her life, her cheerless, monotonous, idle life, when youth was passing by, and there was nothing bright to look forward to in the future—to refuse under such circumstances was madness, it was a caprice and a whim, and God might even punish her for it.