Page 303 - the-idiot

back is turned you suspect me,’ said the prince, smiling,
and trying to hide his emotion.
‘I trust your voice, when I hear you speak. I quite under-
stand that you and I cannot be put on a level, of course.’
‘Why did you add that?—There! Now you are cross again,’
said the prince, wondering.
‘We were not asked, you see. We were made different,
with different tastes and feelings, without being consulted.
You say you love her with pity. I have no pity for her. She
hates me— that’s the plain truth of the matter. I dream of
her every night, and always that she is laughing at me with
another man. And so she does laugh at me. She thinks no
more of marrying me than if she were changing her shoe.
Would you believe it, I haven’t seen her for five days, and I
daren’t go near her. She asks me what I come for, as if she
were not content with having disgraced me—‘
‘Disgraced you! How?’
‘Just as though you didn’t know! Why, she ran away from
me, and went to you. You admitted it yourself, just now.’
‘But surely you do not believe that she...’
‘That she did not disgrace me at Moscow with that officer.
Zemtuznikoff? I know for certain she did, after having fixed
our marriage-day herself!’
‘Impossible!’ cried the prince.
‘I know it for a fact,’ replied Rogojin, with conviction.
‘It is not like her, you say? My friend, that’s absurd. Per-
haps such an act would horrify her, if she were with you,
but it is quite different where I am concerned. She looks on
me as vermin. Her affair with Keller was simply to make a

0 The Idiot