White Nights

Have you lived or not? Look, one says to oneself, look how cold the world is growing

“I expected that he would come and see us more and more often after that, but it wasn’t so at all. He almost entirely gave up coming. He would just come in about once a month, and then only to invite us to the theatre. We went twice again. Only I wasn’t at all pleased with that; I saw that he was simply sorry for me because I was so hardly treated by grandmother, and that was all. As time went on, I grew more and more restless, I couldn’t sit still, I couldn’t read, I couldn’t work; sometimes I laughed and did something to annoy grandmother, at another

time I would cry.

In two minutes you have made me happy for ever.

. . Good-bye, thank you! . . . ”

“Surely . . . surely you don’t mean . . . that we shall never see each other again? . . . Surely this is not to be the end?”

“You see,” said the girl, laughing, “at first you only wanted two words, and now. . . . However, I won’t say anything . . . perhaps we shall meet. . . . ”

You . . . perhaps it was my fancy

because I love you so at this moment, because I am worthy of your love, because I will deserve it . . . my dear! Next week I am to be married to him.

only I would love you, I would love you so, that even if you still loved him, even if you went on loving the man I don’t know, you would never feel that my love was a burden to you. You would only feel every minute that at your side was beating a grateful, grateful heart, a warm heart ready for your sake. . . . Oh Nastenka, Nastenka! What have you done to me?”

Why, one thanks some people for being alive at the same time

with one; I thank you for having met me, for my being able to remember you all

my life!”

for allow me, Nastenka, to tell my story in the third person, for one feels awfully ashamed to tell it in the first person

Hush, don’t swear, I know you are ready to flare up like gunpowder