pretended benefits and sacrifices, you were in a position to say, "the girl I have loved." . . . But you are too honest to tell such a lie as that.' Marianna was shaking as if she were in a fever. 'You have always hated me. At this very moment, at the bottom of your heart, as you said just now, you are glad—yes, glad—that I am justifying your constant predictions, that I am covering myself with scandal, with disgrace; all that you mind is that part of the disgrace may fall on your aristocratic, virtuous household.'
'You are insulting me,' faltered Valentina Mihalovna. 'Kindly leave the room.'
But Marianna could not control herself.
'Your household, you say, all your household and Anna Zaharovna and all know of my conduct! and they are all horrified and indignant.. . . But do you suppose I ask anything of you, or them, or any of these people? Do you suppose I prize their good opinion? Do you think the living at your expense, as you call it, has been sweet? I would prefer any poverty to this luxury. Don't you see that between your household and me there's a perfect gulf, a gulf that nothing can conceal? Can you—you're a clever woman, too—fail to realise that? And if you feel hatred for me, can't you understand the feeling I must have for
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