Again breath failed her, while an hysterical sob caught her by the throat. Her gasping lips looked parched, her breast kept convulsively rising and falling, and a curious anger was burning in her eyes. Yet her face was so replete with charm—each line of her features was vibrating with such beauty, was animated with such passion—that Ordynov’s brooding thoughts once more took to flight, and he longed for one thing, and one thing only: to press his heart to that of the young girl, to let it forget everything as it beat to the same stormy rhythm as hers. Their eyes met, and she smiled. Instantly he felt as though he were caught between two rivers of fire.

“Mercy—have mercy!” he gasped. He was so close to her that their breaths were actually mingling. “It is you who have bewitched me. Wherein does your trouble lie? I do not know. I only know that my mind has for ever lost its peace. Forget those sorrows of yours, and tell me what you wish; command me, and I will obey. Only come with me. Do not leave me here to die.”

Katerina looked at him, but returned no answer. She had tried to interrupt him, and to take his hand, but the words had failed her. For the second time a curious smile dawned on her lips—there dawned something almost like laughter.

“Nay, but I have not told you all,” she continued, raising her voice a little. “I have yet many things to tell you. Do you wish to hear them? Do you, my poor, passionate lover? Listen, then, to your sister, for you do not yet understand the extent of her trouble. I could tell you how I spent a year with my protector, but I will not do so. At the end of that year he descended the river with some friends of his, and I was left at the house of a woman whom he called his mother—there to await his return. For a month, for two months, I waited. Then one day, when in the city, I met a young merchant. No sooner did I catch sight of him than the memory of my earlier and happier years came back to me.

“ ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, after he had exchanged a few words with me, ‘I am Alesha,⁸ your old betrothed. Do you remember how the old folk plighted us when we were children? Do you remember it? Or have you forgotten? Think a moment, for I am of your own country.’

“ ‘And what say they of me in our own country?’ I asked him.

“Alesha smiled.

“ ‘They say that you are leading a bad life,’ he replied, ‘—that you have lost your honour, and are living with a brigand, a robber of men.’

“ ‘And what say you of me?’

“He shuddered.

“ ‘I can say nothing good of you, nothing good. Yet never have I spoken ill of you since we last parted. . . . Ah, you have been my ruin! Pray buy my soul too, as you have bought his. Take my heart too, and make sport of my love. I am alone in the world—my own master now. My soul belongs to me alone. I have not acted as a certain girl acted—a girl who killed her own memory. I have not sold my soul. Why, then, do I say, “Buy it,” seeing that it is not for sale? No, I will give it you for nothing. There is no reserve price upon it in the market.’