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Making no explanation, as though I, as a sort of higher being, must
understand everything without explanations, she held out a piece of
paper to me. Her whole face was positively beaming at that instant with
naive, almost childish, triumph. I unfolded it. It was a letter to her from
a medical student or someone of that sort--a very high-flown and
flowery, but extremely respectful, love-letter. I don't recall the words
now, but I remember well that through the high-flown phrases there was
apparent a genuine feeling, which cannot be feigned. When I had
finished reading it I met her glowing, questioning, and childishly
impatient eyes fixed upon me. She fastened her eyes upon my face and
waited impatiently for what I should say. In a few words, hurriedly,
but with a sort of joy and pride, she explained to me that she had been
to a dance somewhere in a private house, a family of "very nice people,
WHO KNEW NOTHING, absolutely nothing, for she had only come here
so lately and it had all happened ... and she hadn't made up her
mind to stay and was certainly going away as soon as she had paid her
debt..." and at that party there had been the student who had danced
with her all the evening. He had talked to her, and it turned out that he
had known her in old days at Riga when he was a child, they had played
together, but a very long time ago--and he knew her parents, but ABOUT THIS
he knew nothing, nothing whatever, and had no suspicion! And the
day after the dance (three days ago) he had sent her that letter through
the friend with whom she had gone to the party ... and ... well, that
was all."
She dropped her shining eyes with a sort of bashfulness as she finished.
The poor girl was keeping that student's letter as a precious treasure,
and had run to fetch it, her only treasure, because she did not want me to
go away without knowing that she, too, was honestly and genuinely loved;
that she, too, was addressed respectfully. No doubt that letter was destined
to lie in her box and lead to nothing. But none the less, I am certain
that she would keep it all her life as a precious treasure, as her pride and
justification, and now at such a minute she had thought of that letter and
brought it with naive pride to raise herself in my eyes that I might see,
that I, too, might think well of her. I said nothing, pressed her hand and
went out. I so longed to get away ... I walked all the way home, in spite
of the fact that the melting snow was still falling in heavy flakes. I was
exhausted, shattered, in bewilderment. But behind the bewilderment the
truth was already gleaming. The loathsome truth.
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