Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment

PART III
1. CHAPTER I (continued)

"But I don't think!"

"Here you have modesty, brother, silence, bashfulness, a savage virtue . . . and yet she's sighing and melting like wax, simply melting! Save me from her, by all that's unholy! She's most prepossessing . . . I'll repay you, I'll do anything. . . ."

Zossimov laughed more violently than ever.

"Well, you are smitten! But what am I to do with her?"

"It won't be much trouble, I assure you. Talk any rot you like to her, as long as you sit by her and talk. You're a doctor, too; try curing her of something. I swear you won't regret it. She has a piano, and you know, I strum a little. I have a song there, a genuine Russian one: 'I shed hot tears.' She likes the genuine article--and well, it all began with that song; Now you're a regular performer, a /maitre/, a Rubinstein. . . . I assure you, you won't regret it!"

"But have you made her some promise? Something signed? A promise of marriage, perhaps?"

"Nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of the kind! Besides she is not that sort at all. . . . Tchebarov tried that. . . ."

"Well then, drop her!"

"But I can't drop her like that!"

"Why can't you?"

"Well, I can't, that's all about it! There's an element of attraction here, brother."

"Then why have you fascinated her?"

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