Free First Love by Ivan Turgenev

my fancy, a woman’s figure flashed by, a few paces from me … I strained my eyes eagerly into the darkness, I held my breath. What was that? Did I hear steps, or was it my heart beating again? “Who is here?” I faltered, hardly audibly. What was that again, a smothered laugh … or a rustling in the leaves … or a sigh just at my ear? I felt afraid.… “Who is here?” I repeated still more softly.
    The air blew in a gust for an instant; a streak of fire flashed across the sky; it was a star falling. “Zinaïda?” I wanted to call, but the word died away on my lips. And all at once everything became profoundly still around, as is often the case in the middle of the night.… Even the grasshoppers ceased their chirr in the trees—only a window rattled somewhere. I stood and stood, and then went back to my room, to my chilled bed. I felt a strange sensation; as though I had gone to a tryst, and had been left lonely, and had passed close by another’s happiness.

XVII
    The following day I only had a passing glimpse of Zinaïda: she was driving somewhere with the old princess in a cab. But I saw Lushin, who, however, barely vouchsafed me a greeting, and Malevsky. The young count grinned, and began affably talking to me. Of all those who visited at the lodge, he alone had succeeded in forcing his way into our house, and had favourably impressed my mother. My father did not take to him, and treated him with a civility almost insulting.
    “Ah,
monsieur le page
,” began Malevsky, “delighted to meet you. What is your lovely queen doing?”
    His fresh handsome face was so detestable to me at that moment, and he looked at me with such contemptuous amusement that I did not answer him at all.
    “Are you still angry?” he went on. “You’ve no reason to be. It wasn’t I who called you a page, you know, andpages attend queens especially. But allow me to remark that you perform your duties very badly.”
    “How so?”
    “Pages ought to be inseparable from their mistresses; pages ought to know everything they do, they ought, indeed, to watch over them,” he added, lowering his voice, “day and night.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “What do I mean? I express myself pretty clearly, I fancy. Day and night. By day it’s not so much matter; it’s light, and people are about in the daytime; but by night, then look out for misfortune. I advise you not to sleep at nights and to watch, watch with all your energies. You remember, in the garden, by night, at the fountain, that’s where there’s need to look out. You will thank me.”
    Malevsky laughed and turned his back on me. He, most likely, attached no great importance to what he had said to me, he had a reputation for mystifying, and was noted for his power of taking people in at masquerades, which was greatly augmented by the almost unconscious falsity in which his whole nature was steeped.… He only wanted to tease me; but every word he uttered was a poison that ran through my veins. The blood rushed to my head. “Ah! so that’s it!” I said to myself; “Good! So there was reason for me to feel drawn into the garden! That shan’t be so!” I cried aloud, and struck myself on the chest with my fist, though precisely what should not be so I could not have said. “Whether Malevsky himself goesinto the garden,” I thought (he was bragging, perhaps; he has insolence enough for that), “or some one else (the fence of our garden was very low, and there was no difficulty in getting over it), anyway, if anyone falls into my hands, it will be the worse for him! I don’t advise anyone to meet me! I will prove to all the world and to her, the traitress (I actually used the word ‘traitress’) that I can be revenged!”
    I returned to my own room, took out of the writing-table an English knife I had recently bought, felt its sharp edge, and knitting my brows with an air of cold and concentrated determination, thrust it into my pocket, as though doing such deeds