“I had begun to recover, and to forget. Marfinka’s marriage is close at hand, there was a great deal to do and my attention was distracted, but yesterday I was violently excited, and am not quite calm now.”
“What has happened? Can I serve you, Vera Vassilievna?”
“Not that. You know all that has happened; read what I have received,” she said, taking the letters from a box, and handing them to him.
Tushin read, and turned as pale as he had been when he arrived.
“You are right. In this matter my assistance is superfluous. You alone can....”
“I cannot, Ivan Ivanovich,” she said, while he looked at her interrogatively. “I can neither write a word to him, nor see him; yet I must give him an answer. He will wait there in the arbour, or if I leave him without an answer he will come here, and I can do nothing.”
“You ask the same question as Grandmother. Yet you have read the letter! He promises me happiness, will submit to a betrothal. Yesterday I tried to write to him to tell him that I was not happy, and should not be happy after betrothal, and to bid him farewell. But I cannot put these lines on paper, and I cannot commission anyone to deliver my answer. Grandmother flared up when she read the letter, and I fear she would not be able to restrain her feelings. So I....”
“You thought of me,” said Tushin, standing up. “Tushin, you thought, would do you this service, and then you sent for me.” Pride, joy, and affection shone in his eyes.
“No, Ivan Ivanovich. I sent for you, so that you might be at my side in these difficult hours. I am calmer when you are here. But I will not send you--down there, I will not inflict on you this last insult, will not set you face to face with a man, who cannot be an object of indifference to you--no, no.”
Tushin was about to speak, but instead he stretched out his hands in silence, and Vera looked at him with mixed feelings of gratitude and sorrow, as she realised with what small things he was made happy.
“Insult!” he said. “It would have been hard to bear if you were to send me to him with an olive branch, to bring him up here from the depths of the precipice. But even though that dove-like errand would not suit me, I would still undertake it to give you peace, if I thought it would make you happy.”