We suddenly looked at each other and, I remember, it seems I blushed a little. In any case he broke off the conversation. I, however, wanted very much to talk. The thought of one meeting yesterday tempted me to ask him some questions, only I didn’t know how to approach it. And in general I was somehow quite out of sorts. I was also struck by his astonishing courtesy, politeness, ease of manner—in short, all that polish of their tone, which they assume almost from the cradle. In his letter I found two gross errors in grammar. And generally, in such encounters, I never belittle myself, but become more curt, which sometimes may be bad. But in the present case it was especially aggravated by the thought that I was covered with down, so that several times I even blundered into familiarity . . . I noticed on the sly that the prince occasionally studied me very intently.
“Tell me, Prince,” I suddenly popped out with a question, “don’t you find it ridiculous within yourself that I, who am still such a ‘milksop,’ wanted to challenge you to a duel, and for somebody else’s offense at that?”
“One can be very offended by an offense to one’s father. No, I don’t find it ridiculous.”
“And to me it seems terribly ridiculous . . . in someone else’s eyes . . . that is, of course, not in my own. The more so as I’m Dolgoruky and not Versilov. And if you’re not telling me the truth or are softening it somehow from the decency of social polish, then does it mean you’re also deceiving me in everything else?”
“No, I don’t find it ridiculous,” he replied terribly seriously. “How can you not feel your father’s blood in you? . . . True, you’re still young, because . . . I don’t know . . . it seems someone who is not of age cannot fight a duel, and his challenge cannot be accepted . . . according to the rules . . . But, if you like, there can be only one serious objection here: if you make a challenge without the knowledge of the offended person, for whose offense you are making the challenge, you are thereby expressing, as it were, a certain lack of respect for him on your own part, isn’t that true?”
Our conversation was suddenly interrupted by a footman, who came to announce something. Seeing him, the prince, who seemed to have been expecting him, stood up without finishing what he was saying and quickly went over to him, so that the footman made his announcement in a low voice, and I, of course, didn’t hear what it was.
“Excuse me,” the prince turned to me, “I’ll be back in a minute.”
And he went out. I was left alone; I paced the room and thought. Strangely, I both liked him and terribly disliked him. There was something in him that I could not name myself, but something repellent. “If he’s not laughing at me a bit, then without doubt he’s terribly straightforward, but if he was laughing at me . . . then maybe he’d seem more intelligent . . .” I thought somehow strangely. I went over to the table and read Versilov’s letter once more. I was so absorbed that I even forgot about the time, and when I came to my senses, I suddenly noticed that the prince’s little minute had indisputably lasted a whole quarter of an hour already. That began to trouble me a little; I paced up and down once more, finally took my hat and, I remember, decided to step out so as to meet someone, to send for the prince, and, when he came, to take leave of him at once, assuring him that I had things to do and could not wait any longer. It seemed to me that this would be most proper, because I was slightly pained by the thought that, in leaving me for so long, he was treating me negligently.
The two closed doors to this room were at two ends of the same wall. Having forgotten which door we came in by, or, rather, out of absentmindedness, I opened one of them and suddenly saw, sitting on a sofa in a long and narrow room—my sister Liza. There was no one there except her, and she was, of course, waiting for someone. But before I had time even to be surprised, I suddenly heard the voice of the prince, talking loudly to someone and going back to his study. I quickly closed the door, and the prince, coming in through the other door, noticed nothing. I remember he started apologizing and said something about some Anna Fyodorovna . . . But I was so confused and astounded that I made out almost none of it, and only muttered that I had to go home, and then insistently and quickly left. The well-bred prince, of course, must have looked at my manners with curiosity. He saw me off to the front hall and kept talking, but I did not reply and did not look at him.
IV
GOING OUTSIDE, I turned left and started walking at random. Nothing added up in my head. I walked slowly and, it seems, had gone quite far, some five hundred steps, when I suddenly felt a light tap on my shoulder. I turned and saw Liza: she had caught up with me and tapped me lightly with her umbrella. There was something terribly gay and a bit sly in her shining eyes.
