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148
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
Her voice was so soft and kind that my heart
suddenly thawed, and she appeared to me dreadfully
charming once more.
" Well, how can he help loving her when she is so
splendid, but I am nasty and mean ?" thought I, with
a sudden burst of self-depreciation. I crept into her
bed, nestled up to her, and began to cry. She stroked
my head.
" Come, stop that, you little goose. Here’s a silly
child," she kept repeating in a caressing way. All at
once she could control herself no longer, but broke
into inextinguishable laughter. " Why, she has taken
it into her head to fall in love, and with whom?
With a man who is three and a half times as old as
she is," she said.
These words, this laughter, suddenly aroused in my
soul the senseless hope which utterly possessed me.
"So you do not love him?" I asked in a whisper,
almost stilling with emotion.
Aniuta meditated.
" Well, you see," she began, evidently picking her
words, and finding herself in difficulties, " of course I
love him, and I have a frightful, frightful respect for
him. He is so kind, so clever, such a genius!"
She grew very animated, but my heart contracted
again. " But how can I explain it to you ? I do not
love him as he—well, in short, I don’t love him in the
way to marry him!" she said with sudden decision.
Heavens! How light dawned in my soul! I threw
myself on my sister and began to kiss her hands and
neck. Aniuta went on talking for a long time.
" You see, I am sometimes astonished myself that I
cannot love him! He is such a fine man! At first I
thought that perhaps I might come to love him; but
he does not need such a wife as I, not in the least.
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