"Why do you say that here?" Aglaya suddenly cried. "Why do you say it to them?To them! To them!"
She seemed to be in the ultimate degree of indignation: her eyes flashed fire. The prince stood dumb and speechless before her and suddenly turned pale.
"There's no one here who is worth such words!" Aglaya burst out. "No one, no one here is worth your little finger, or your intelligence, or your heart! You're more honest than all of them, nobler than all of them, better than all of them, kinder than all of them, more intelligent than all of them! There are people here who aren't worthy of bending down to pick up the handkerchief you've just dropped . . . Why do you humiliate yourself and place yourself lower than everyone else? Why have you twisted everything in yourself, why is there no pride in you?"
"Lord, who'd have thought it?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna clasped her hands.
"The poor knight! Hurrah!" Kolya shouted in delight.
"Quiet! . . . How do they dare offend me here in your house!" Aglaya suddenly fell upon Lizaveta Prokofyevna, now in that hysterical state in which one disregards all limits and overcomes all obstacles. "Why do they all torment me, every last one of them! Why do they all badger me on account of you, Prince? I won't marry you for anything! Know that, never and not for anything! Can one marry such a ridiculous man as you? Look at yourself in the mirror now, see how you're standing there! . . . Why, why do they tease me, saying that I should marry you? You must know it! You're also in conspiracy with them!"
"No one ever teased her!" Adelaida murmured in fright.
"It never entered anyone's mind, no one ever said a word about it!" cried Alexandra Ivanovna.
"Who teased her? When? Who could have told her that? Is she raving?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna, trembling with wrath, turned to them all.
"You all said it, all of you, all these three days! I'll never, never marry him!"
Having shouted that, Aglaya dissolved in bitter tears, covered her face with a handkerchief, and collapsed into a chair.
"But he hasn't asked you yet . . ."
"I haven't asked you, Aglaya Ivanovna," suddenly escaped from the prince.
"Wha-a-at?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna suddenly drew out in astonishment, indignation, and horror. "What's tha-a-at?"
She refused to believe her ears.
"I meant to say ... I meant to say," the prince was trembling, "I only meant to explain to Aglaya Ivanovna ... to have the honor of explaining to her that I never had any intention ... to have the honor of asking for her hand . . . even once . . . I'm not to blame for any of it, by God, I'm not, Aglaya Ivanovna! I never meant to, it never entered my mind and never will, you'll see for yourself: you may be sure! Some wicked man has slandered me before you! You may rest assured!"
Saying this, he approached Aglaya. She took away the handkerchief with which she had covered her face, quickly glanced at him and his whole frightened figure, realized what he had just said, and suddenly burst out laughing right in his face—such merry,
irrepressible laughter, such funny and mocking laughter, that Adelaida was the first to succumb, especially when she also looked at the prince, rushed to her sister, embraced her, and laughed the same irrepressible, merry schoolgirl's laughter as Aglaya. Looking at them, the prince suddenly began to smile, too, and to repeat with a joyful and happy expression:
"Well, thank God, thank God!"
At this point Alexandra also could not help herself and laughed wholeheartedly. It seemed there would be no end to this laughter of the three of them.
"Ah, crazy girls!" Lizaveta Prokofyevna muttered. "First they frighten you, then . . ."
But Prince Shch., too, was laughing now, Evgeny Pavlovich was laughing, Kolya was guffawing nonstop, and, looking at them all, the prince also guffawed.
"Let's go for a walk, let's go for a walk!" cried Adelaida. "All of us together, and certainly the prince with us. There's no need for you to leave, you dear man! What a dear man he is, Aglaya! Isn't it so, mama? Besides, I must certainly, certainly kiss him and embrace him for . . . for what he just said to Aglaya. Maman,dear, will you allow me to kiss him? Aglaya, allow me to kiss yourprince!" cried the mischievous girl, and she indeed ran over to the prince and kissed him on the forehead. He seized her hands, squeezed them so hard that Adelaida nearly cried out, looked at her with infinite joy, and suddenly brought her hand quickly to his lips and kissed it three times.
"Let's go, then!" Aglaya called. "Prince, you'll escort me. Can he, maman?A suitor who has rejected me? You have rejected me forever, haven't you, Prince? No, you don't offer a lady your arm like that, don't you know how to take a lady's arm? Like this, come on, we'll go ahead of them all; do you want to go ahead of them, tête-à-tête?"
She talked nonstop, still with bursts of laughter.
"Thank God! Thank God!" Lizaveta Prokofyevna kept repeating, not knowing herself what she was glad about.
"Extremely strange people!" thought Prince Shch., maybe for the hundredth time since he had become close with them, but . . . he liked these strange people. As for the prince, maybe he did not like him so much; Prince Shch. was a bit glum and as if preoccupied as they all went out for a walk.
Evgeny Pavlovich seemed to be in the merriest spirits; he made
Alexandra and Adelaida laugh all the way to the vauxhall, and they laughed somehow especially readily at his jokes, so much so that he began to have a sneaking suspicion that they might not be listening to him at all. At this thought, suddenly and without explaining the reason, he burst at last into extremely and absolutely sincere laughter (such was his character!). The sisters, though they were in a most festive mood, glanced constantly at Aglaya and the prince, who were walking ahead of them; it was clear that their little sister had set them a great riddle. Prince Shch. kept trying to strike up a conversation with Lizaveta Prokofyevna about unrelated things, perhaps in order to distract her, but she found him terribly tiresome. Her thoughts seemed quite scattered, she gave inappropriate answers and sometimes did not answer at all. But Aglaya Ivanovna's riddles were not yet ended for that evening. The last one fell to the prince's lot. When they had gone about a hundred steps from the dacha, Aglaya said in a rapid half whisper to her stubbornly silent escort:
"Look to the right."
The prince looked.
"Look closer. Do you see the bench in the park, where those three big trees are . . . the green bench?"
The prince answered that he did.
"Do you like the setting? Sometimes I come early, at seven o'clock, when everyone is still asleep, to sit there by myself."
The prince murmured that it was a wonderful setting.
"And now go away from me, I don't want to walk arm in arm with you anymore. Or better, let's walk arm in arm, but don't say a word to me. I want to think alone to myself. . ."
The warning was in any case unnecessary: the prince would certainly not have uttered a single word all the way even without orders. His heart began to pound terribly when he heard about the bench. After a moment he thought better of it and, in shame, drove away his absurd notion.
As is known and as everyone at least affirms, the public that gathers at the Pavlovsk vauxhall on weekdays is "more select" than on Sundays and holidays, when "all sorts of people" arrive from the city. The dresses are not festive but elegant. The custom is to get together and listen to music. The orchestra, which may indeed be one of our best garden orchestras, plays new things. The decency and decorum are extreme, in spite of a certain generally familial and even intimate air. The acquaintances, all of them dacha people,