r. Do wait, will you!"

She sat down on the chair again. Stepan Trofimovitch held her hand
tight. For a long while she would not allow him to speak. He raised her
hand to his lips and fell to kissing it. She set her teeth and looked
away into the corner of the room.

_"Je vous aimais,"_ broke from him at last. She had never heard such words
from him, uttered in such a voice.

"H'm!" she growled in response.

_"Je vous aimais toute ma vie... vingt ans!"_

She remained silent for two or three minutes.

"And when you were getting yourself up for Dasha you sprinkled yourself
with scent," she said suddenly, in a terrible whisper.

Stepan Trofimovitch was dumbfounded.

"You put on a new tie..."

Again silence for two minutes.

"Do you remember the cigar?"

"My friend," he faltered, overcome with horror.

"That cigar at the window in the evening... the moon was shining...
after the arbour... at Skvoreshniki? Do you remember, do you remember?"
She jumped up from her place, seized his pillow by the corners and shook
it with his head on it. "Do you remember, you worthless, worthless,
ignoble, cowardly, worthless man, always worthless!" she hissed in her
furious whisper, restraining herself from speaking loudly. At last
she left him and sank on the chair, covering her face with her hands.
"Enough!" she snapped out, drawing herself up. "Twenty years have
passed, there's no calling them back. I am a fool too."

_"Je vous aimais."_ He clasped his hands again.

"Why do you keep on with your _aimais_ and _aimais_? Enough!" she cried,
leaping up again. "And if you don't go to sleep at once I'll... You need
rest; go to sleep, go to sleep at once, shut your eyes. Ach, mercy on
us, perhaps he wants some lunch! What do you eat? What does he eat? Ach,
mercy on us! Where is that woman? Where is she?"

There was a general bustle again. But Stepan Trofimovitch faltered in a
weak voice that he really would like to go to sleep _une heure,_ and then
_un bouillon, un the.... enfin il est si heureux._ He lay back and really
did seem to go to sleep (he probably pretended to). Varvara Petrovna
waited a little, and stole out on tiptoe from behind the partition.

She settled herself in the landlady's room, turned out the landlady and
her husband, and told Dasha to bring her _that_ woman. There followed an
examination in earnest.

"Tell me all about it, my good girl. Sit down beside me; that's right.
Well?"

"I met Stepan Trofimovi