University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII
6th June.

ALL these days I have not once departed from my system. Princess Mary has come to like talking to me; I have told her a few of the strange events of my life, and she is beginning to look on me as an extraordinary man. I mock at everything in the world, especially feelings; and she is taking alarm. When I am present, she does not dare to embark upon sentimental discussions with Grushnitski, and already, on a few occasions, she has answered his sallies with a mocking smile. But every time that Grushnitski comes up to her I assume an air of meekness and leave the two of them together. On the first occasion, she was glad, or tried to make it appear so; on the second, she was angry with me; on the third — with Grushnitski.

"You have very little vanity!" she said to me yesterday. "What makes you think that I find Grushnitski the more entertaining?"

I answered that I was sacrificing my own pleasure for the sake of the happiness of a friend.

"And my pleasure, too," she added.

I looked at her intently and assumed a serious air. After that for the whole day I did not speak a single word to her. . . In the evening, she was pensive; this morning, at the well, more pensive still. When I went up to her, she was listening absent-mindedly to Grushnitski, who was apparently falling into raptures about Nature, but, so soon as she perceived me, she began to laugh — at a most inopportune moment — pretending not to notice me. I went on a little further and began stealthily to observe her. She turned away from her companion and yawned twice. Decidedly she had grown tired of Grushnitski — I will not talk to her for another two days.