rtable when left alone in the room with Varenika, for
I could not rid myself of the idea that, though far from pretty, she
wished me to fall in love with her; but in time this nervousness of mine
began to lessen, since she always looked so natural, and talked to me
so exactly as though she were conversing with her brother or Lubov
Sergievna, that I came to look upon her simply as a person to whom it
was in no way dangerous or wrong to show that I took pleasure in her
company. Throughout the whole of our acquaintance she appeared to me
merely a plain, though not positively ugly, girl, concerning whom one
would never ask oneself the question,

"Am I, or am I not, in love with her?" Sometimes I would talk to her
direct, but more often I did so through Dimitri or Lubov Sergievna; and
it was the latter method which afforded me the most pleasure. I derived
considerable gratification from discoursing when she was there, from
hearing her sing, and, in general, from knowing that she was in the
same room as myself; but it was seldom now that any thoughts of what our
future relations might ever be, or that any dreams of self-sacrifice for
my friend if he should ever fall in love with my sister, came into my
head. If any such ideas or fancies occurred to me, I felt satisfied with
the present, and drove away all thoughts about the future.

Yet, in spite of this intimacy, I continued to look upon it as my
bounden duty to keep the Nechludoffs in general, and Varenika in
particular, in ignorance of my true feelings and tastes, and strove
always to appear altogether another young man than what I really was--to
appear, indeed, such a young man as could never possibly have existed. I
affected to be "soulful" and would go off into raptures and exclamations
and impassioned gestures whenever I wished it to be thought that
anything pleased me, while, on the other hand, I tried always to seem
indifferent towards any unusual circumstance which I myself perceived or
which I had had pointed out to me. I aimed always at figuring both as a
sarcastic cynic divorced from every sacred tie and as a shrewd observer,
as well as at being accounted logical in all my conduct, precise and
methodical in all my ways of life, and at the same time contemptuous of
all materiality. I may safely say that I was far better in reality than
the strange being into whom I attempted to convert myself; yet, whatever
I was or was not, the Nechludoffs were unfailingly kind t