Page 636 - the-idiot

I—good gracious! you suspected, perhaps, that I sent for
you to come here in order to catch you in a trap, so that they
should find us here together, and make you marry me—‘
‘Aglaya Ivanovna, aren’t you ashamed of saying such a
thing? How could such a horrible idea enter your sweet, in-
nocent heart? I am certain you don’t believe a word of what
you say, and probably you don’t even know what you are
talking about.’
Aglaya sat with her eyes on the ground; she seemed to
have alarmed even herself by what she had said.
‘No, I’m not; I’m not a bit ashamed!’ she murmured. ‘And
how do you know my heart is innocent? And how dared you
send me a love— letter that time?’
‘LOVE-LETTER? My letter a love-letter? That letter was
the most respectful of letters; it went straight from my heart,
at what was perhaps the most painful moment of my life! I
thought of you at the time as a kind of light. I—‘
‘Well, very well, very well!’ she said, but quite in a dif-
ferent tone. She was remorseful now, and bent forward to
touch his shoulder, though still trying not to look him in
the face, as if the more persuasively to beg him not to be an-
gry with her. ‘Very well,’ she continued, looking thoroughly
ashamed of herself, ‘I feel that I said a very foolish thing. I
only did it just to try you. Take it as unsaid, and if I offended
you, forgive me. Don’t look straight at me like that, please;
turn your head away. You called it a ‘horrible idea’; I only
said it to shock you. Very often I am myself afraid of saying
what I intend to say, and out it comes all the same. You have
just told me that you wrote that letter at the most painful