, Stavrogin, for his
name, famous as it was. Perhaps there was nothing in it but the play
of femininity on her side; the manifestation of an unconscious feminine
yearning so natural in some extremely feminine types. However, I won't
answer for it; the depths of the female heart have not been explored to
this day. But I must continue.

It is to be supposed that she soon inwardly guessed the significance of
her friend's strange expression; she was quick and observant, and he was
sometimes extremely guileless. But the evenings went on as before, and
their conversations were just as poetic and interesting. And behold
on one occasion at nightfall, after the most lively and poetical
conversation, they parted affectionately, warmly pressing each other's
hands at the steps of the lodge where Stepan Trofimovitch slept. Every
summer he used to move into this little lodge which stood adjoining the
huge seignorial house of Skvoreshniki, almost in the garden. He had only
just gone in, and in restless hesitation taken a cigar, and not having
yet lighted it, was standing weary and motionless before the open
window, gazing at the light feathery white clouds gliding around the
bright moon, when suddenly a faint rustle made him start and turn
round. Varvara Petrovna, whom he had left only four minutes earlier,
was standing before him again. Her yellow face was almost blue. Her lips
were pressed tightly together and twitching at the corners. For ten full
seconds she looked him in the eyes in silence with a firm relentless
gaze, and suddenly whispered rapidly:

"I shall never forgive you for this!"

When, ten years later, Stepan Trofimovitch, after closing the doors,
told me this melancholy tale in a whisper, he vowed that he had been so
petrified on the spot that he had not seen or heard how Varvara Petrovna
had disappeared. As she never once afterwards alluded to the incident
and everything went on as though nothing had happened, he was all his
life inclined to the idea that it was all an hallucination, a symptom
of illness, the more so as he was actually taken ill that very night
and was indisposed for a fortnight, which, by the way, cut short the
interviews in the arbour.

But in spite of his vague theory of hallucination he seemed every day,
all his life, to be expecting the continuation, and, so to say, the
_denouement_ of this affair. He could not believe that that was the end of
it! And if so he must have looked strangely somet