r.

"I sat waiting for five minutes, 'mastering my heart,'" he told me
afterwards. "I saw before me not the woman whom I had known for twenty
years. An absolute conviction that all was over gave me a strength which
astounded even her. I swear that she was surprised at my stoicism in
that last hour."

Varvara Petrovna suddenly put down her pencil on the table and turned
quickly to Stepan Trofimovitch.

"Stepan Trofimovitch, we have to talk of business. I'm sure you have
prepared all your fervent words and various phrases, but we'd better go
straight to the point, hadn't we?"

She had been in too great a hurry to show the tone she meant to take.
And what might not come next?

"Wait, be quiet; let me speak. Afterwards you shall, though really I
don't know what you can answer me," she said in a rapid patter. "The
twelve hundred roubles of your pension I consider a sacred obligation
to pay you as long as you live. Though why a sacred obligation, simply
a contract; that would be a great deal more real, wouldn't it? If you
like, we'll write it out. Special arrangements have been made in case
of my death. But you are receiving from me at present lodging, servants,
and your maintenance in addition. Reckoning that in money it would
amount to fifteen hundred roubles, wouldn't it? I will add another three
hundred roubles, making three thousand roubles in all. Will that be
enough a year for you? I think that's not too little? In any extreme
emergency I would add something more. And so, take your money, send me
back my servants, and live by yourself where you like in Petersburg, in
Moscow, abroad, or here, only not with me. Do you hear?"

"Only lately those lips dictated to me as imperatively and as suddenly
very different demands," said Stepan Trofimovitch slowly and with
sorrowful distinctness. "I submitted... and danced the Cossack dance
to please you. _Oui, la comparaison peut etre permise. C'etait comme un
petit Cosaque du Don qui sautait sur sa propre tombe._ Now..."

"Stop, Stepan Trofimovitch, you are horribly long-winded. You didn't
dance, but came to see me in a new tie, new linen, gloves, scented
and pomatumed. I assure you that you were very anxious to get married
yourself; it was written on your face, and I assure you a most unseemly
expression it was. If I did not mention it to you at the time, it was
simply out of delicacy. But you wished it, you wanted to be married, in
spite of the abominable things you wrote