She sat down on the bench and looked moodily straight before her.
“You yourself, Vera, dreamed of freedom, and you prided yourself on your independence.”
“My head burns. Have pity on your sister! I am ashamed to be so weak.”
“Nothing. Take me home, help me to mount the steps. I am afraid, and would like to lie down. Pardon me for having disturbed you for nothing, for having brought you here. You would have gone away and forgotten me. I am only feverish. Are you angry with me?”
Too dejected to reply, he gave her his arm, took her as far as her room, and struck a light.
“Send Marina or Masha to stay in my room, please. But say nothing to Grandmother, lest she should be alarmed and come herself. Why are you looking at me so strangely? God knows what I have been saying to you, to plague you and to avenge myself of all my humiliations. Tell Grandmother that I have gone to bed to be up early in the morning, and I pray you bless me in your thoughts, do you hear?”
“I hear,” he said absently, as he pressed her hand and went out in search of Masha.
He looked forward with anxiety to Vera’s awakening. He seemed to have forgotten his own passion since his imagination had become absorbed in the contemplation of her suffering.
“Something is wrong with Vera,” said Tatiana Markovna, shaking her grey head as she saw how grimly he avoided her questioning glance.
“What can it be?” asked Raisky negligently, with an effort to assume indifference.
“Something is wrong, Borushka. She looks so melancholy and is so silent, and often seems to have tears in her eyes. I have spoken to the doctor, but he only talks the old nonsense about nerves,” she said, relapsing into a gloomy silence.
Raisky looked anxiously for Vera’s appearance next morning. She came at last, accompanied by the maid, who carried a warm coat and her hat and shoes. She said good morning to her aunt, asked for coffee, ate her roll with appetite, and reminded Raisky that he had promised to go shopping with her in the town and to take a walk in the park. It amazed him that she should be once more transformed, but there was a certain audacity in her gestures and a haste in her speech which seemed forced and alien from her usual manner and reminded him of her behaviour the day before.