“Nobody has seen you?” said Vera in a whisper, clinging to me.
“Now do you believe that I love you? Oh! I have long hesitated, long tortured myself... But you can do anything you like with me.”
Her heart was beating violently, her hands were cold as ice. She broke out into complaints and jealous reproaches. She demanded that I should confess everything to her, saying that she would bear my faithlessness with submission, because her sole desire was that I should be happy. I did not quite believe that, but I calmed her with oaths, promises and so on.
“So you will not marry Mary? You do not love her?... But she thinks... Do you know, she is madly in love with you, poor girl!”...
About two o’clock in the morning I opened the window and, tying two shawls together, I let myself down from the upper balcony to the lower, holding on by the pillar. A light was still burning in Princess Mary’s room. Something drew me towards that window. The curtain was not quite drawn, and I was able to cast a curious glance into the interior of the room. Mary was sitting on her bed, her hands crossed upon her knees; her thick hair was gathered up under a lace-frilled nightcap; her white shoulders were covered by a large crimson kerchief, and her little feet were hidden in a pair of many-coloured Persian slippers. She was sitting quite still, her head sunk upon her breast; on a little table in front of her was an open book; but her eyes, fixed and full of inexpressible grief, seemed for the hundredth time to be skimming the same page whilst her thoughts were far away.
At that moment somebody stirred behind a shrub. I leaped from the balcony on to the sward. An invisible hand seized me by the shoulder.
“Aha!” said a rough voice: “caught!... I’ll teach you to be entering princesses’ rooms at night!”
“Hold him fast!” exclaimed another, springing out from a corner.
It was Grushnitski and the captain of dragoons.
I struck the latter on the head with my fist, knocked him off his feet, and darted into the bushes. All the paths of the garden which covered the slope opposite our houses were known to me.
A gunshot rang out; a smoking wad fell almost at my feet.
Within a minute I was in my own room, undressed and in bed. My manservant had only just locked the door when Grushnitski and the captain began knocking for admission.