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some question was hovering on her lips. With bashful shyness she looked at him once or twice and then looked down again.
"No, it is not for me to be your first love," she said. "No, no," she said, shaking her head thoughtfully, while the smile stole gently again over her face. "No," she said, at last, laughing; "it's not for me, my own, to be your love."
At that point she glanced at him, but there was suddenly such sadness reflected in her face, such hopeless sorrow suddenly overshadowed all her features, such despair all at once surged up from within, from her heart, that Ordynov was overwhelmed by an unaccountable, painful feehng of compassion for her mj^sterious grief and looked at her with indescribable distress.
"Listen to what I say to you," she said in a voice that wrung his heart, pressing his hands in hers, struggling to stifle her sobs. "Heed me well, Hsten, my joy! You caJm your heart and do not love me as you love me now. It will be better for you, your heart will be lighter and gladder, and you will guard yourself from a fell foe and wiU win a sister fond. I wiU come and see you as you please, fondle you and take no shame upon myself for making friends with you. I was with you for two days when you lay in that cruel sickness! Get to know your sister! It is not for nothing that we have sworn to be brother and sister, it is not for nothing that I prayed and wept to the Holy Mother for you! You won't get another sister! You may go all round the world, you may get to know the whole earth and not find another love like mine, if it is love your heart wants. I wiU love you warmly, I will always love you as I do now, and I wiU love you because your soul is pure and clean cind can be seen through; because when first I glanced at you, at once I knew you were the guest of my house, the longed-for guest, and it was not for nothing that you wanted to come to us; I love you because when you look at me your eyes are full of love and speak for your heart, and when they say an3Hliing, at once I know of aU that is within you and long to give my life for your love, my freedom, because it is sweet to be even a slave to the man whose heart I have found. . . . But my life is not mine but another's . . . and my freedom is bound! Take me for a sister and be a brother to me and take me to your heart when misery, when cruel weakness falls upon me; only do so that I have no shame to come to you and sit through the long night with you as now.
Do you hear me? Is your heart opened to me? Do you understand what I have been saying to you? ..."
She tried to say something more, glanced at him, laid her hand on his shoulder and at last sank helpless on his bosom. Her voice died away in convulsive, passionate sobbing, her bosom heaved, and her face flushed Uke an evening sunset.
"My life," whispered Ord}mov; everything was dark before his eyes and he could hardly breathe. "My joy," he said, not knowing what he was saying, not understanding himself, trembling lest a breath should break the spell, should destroy everything that was happening, which he took rather for a vision than reality: so misty was everything around him! "1 don't know, I don't understand you, I don't remember what you have just said to me, my mind is darkened, my heart aches, my queen!"
At this point his voice broke with emotion. She clung more tightly, more warmly, more fervently to him. He got up, no longer able to le^train himself; shattered, exhausted by ecstasy, he fell on his Ifffees. Convulsive sobs broke agonisingly from his breSst at la^, and the voice that came straight from his heart quivered like a harp-string, from the fulness of unfathomable ecstasy and bliss.
"Who are you, who are you, my own? Where do you come from, my darling?" he said, trying to stifle his sobs. "From what heaven did you fly into my sphere? It's like a dream about me, I ca
Then his voice broke again, and he bowed his head. But when he raised his eyes, dumb horror froze his heart and the hair stood up on his head.
Katerina was sitting pale as a sheet. She was looking with a fixed stare into the air, her lips were blue as a corpse's auid her eyes were dimmed by a mute, agonising woe. She stood up slowly, took two steps forward and, with a piercing wail, flung herself down before the ikon. . . . Jerky, incoherent wor(k broke from her throat. She lost consciousness. Shaken with horror Ordynov lifted her up and carried her to his bed; he stood over her, frantic. A minute later she opened her eyes, sat up in the bed, looked about her and seized his hand. She drew him towards her, tried to whisper something with her lips that were still pale, but her voice would not obey her. At last she burst into a flood of tears; the hot drops scalded Ordynov's chilly hand.
"It's hard for me, it's hard for me now; my last hour is at hand!" she said at last in desperate anguish.
She tried to say something else, but her falter .g tongue could not utter a word. She looked in despair at OrJynov, who did not understand her. He bent closer to her and listened. . . . At last he heard her whisper distinctly:
"I am corrupted—^they have corrupted me, they have ruined me!"
Ordynov lifted his head and looked at her in wild amazement. Some hideous thought flashed across his mind. Katerina saw the convulsive workings of his face.
"Yes! Corrupted," she went on; "a wicked man corrupted me. It is he who has ruined me! ... I have sold my soul to him. Why, why did you speak of my mother? Why did you want to torture me? God, God be your judge! ..."
A minute later she was softly weeping; Ordjmov's heart was beating and aching in mortal anguish.
"He sa}^," she whispered in a restrained, mysterious voice, "that when he dies he will come and fetch my sinful soul. . . . I am his, I have sold my soul to him. He tortures me, he reads to me in his books. Here, look at his book! here is his book, v He says I have committed the unpardonable sin. Look, look ..."
And she showed him a book. Ordynov did not notice where it had come from. He took it mechanically—^it was all in manuscript like the old heretical books which he had happened to see before, but now he was incapable of looking or concentrating
his attention on anything else. The book fell out of his hands. He softly embraced Katerina, trying to bring her to reason. "Hush, hush," he said; "they have frightened you. I am with you; rest with me, my own, my love, my light."
"You know nothing, nothing," she said, warmly pressing his hand. "I am always like this! I am always afraid. . . . I've tortured you enough, enough! ..."
"I go to him then," she began a minute later, taking a breath; "sometimes he simply comforts me with his words, sometimes he takes his book, the biggest, and reads it over me —^he always reads such grim, threatening things I I don't know what, and don't understand every word; but fear comes upon me; and when I listen to his voice, it is as though it were not he speaking, but someone else, someone evil, someone you could not soften anyhow, could not entreat, and one's heart grows so heavy and bums. . . . Heavier than when this misery comes upon me!"