'Quite free.'
'Ah! that's all I wanted to know.'
'Why do you want to know?'
'Oh, I wanted to—I wanted you to tell me that.'
'Our young lady is anxious to learn,' Punin observed from the sofa.
When I went out into the passage Musa accompanied me, not, of course, from politeness, but with the same malicious intent. I asked her, as I took leave, 'Can you really love him so much?'
'Whether I love him, or whether I don't, that's my affair,' she answered. 'What is to be, will be.'
'Mind what you're about; don't play with fire . . . you'll get burnt.'
'Better be burnt than frozen. You . . . with your good advice! And how can you tell he won't marry me? How do you know I so particularly want to get married? If I am ruined . . . what business is it of yours?'
She slammed the door after me.
I remember that on the way home I reflected with some pleasure that my friend Vladimir Tarhov might find things rather hot for him with his new type. . . He ought to have to pay something for his happiness!
That he would be happy, I was—regretfully—unable to doubt.
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