Page 841 - the-idiot

‘However, it’s all the same to me; laugh or not, just as you
please. When I asked him about you, he told me that he had
long since ceased to love you, that the very recollection of
you was a torture to him, but that he was sorry for you; and
that when he thought of you his heart was pierced. I ought
to tell you that I never in my life met a man anything like
him for noble simplicity of mind and for boundless trust-
fulness. I guessed that anyone who liked could deceive him,
and that he would immediately forgive anyone who did de-
ceive him; and it was for this that I grew to love him—‘
Aglaya paused for a moment, as though suddenly brought
up in astonishment that she could have said these words,
but at the same time a great pride shone in her eyes, like
a defiant assertion that it would not matter to her if ‘this
woman’ laughed in her face for the admission just made.
‘I have told you all now, and of course you understand
what I wish of you.’
‘Perhaps I do; but tell me yourself,’ said Nastasia Phili-
povna, quietly.
Aglaya flushed up angrily.
‘I wished to find out from you,’ she said, firmly, ‘by what
right you dare to meddle with his feelings for me? By what
right you dared send me those letters? By what right do you
continually remind both me and him that you love him, af-
ter you yourself threw him over and ran away from him in
so insulting and shameful a way?’
‘I never told either him or you that I loved him!’ replied
Nastasia Philipovna, with an effort. ‘And—and I did run
away from him—you are right there,’ she added, scarcely

0 The Idiot