She looked at me with a long, penetrating look, as though she would pierce me through with it.
"You give too much," she said, with a laugh; "De Grieux's mistress is not worth fifty thousand francs."
"Polina, how can you talk to me like that!" I cried, reproachfully. "Am I a De Grieux?"
"I hate you! Yes . . . yes! . . . I love you no more than De Grieux," she cried, her eyes suddenly flashing.
Then she suddenly covered her face with her hands and went into hysterics. I rushed to her.
I realised that something had happened to her while I was away. She seemed quite out of her mind.
"Buy me! Do you want to? Do you want to? For fifty thousand francs, like De Grieux?" broke from her with convulsive sobs.
I held her in my arms, kissed her hands, her feet, fell on my knees before her.
Her hysterics passed off. She put both hands on my shoulders, and looked at me intently; she seemed trying to read something in my face. She listened to me, but evidently did not hear what I was saying to her. Some doubt and anxiety betrayed itself in her face. I was anxious about her; it seemed to me that her brain was giving way. Then she began softly drawing me to her; a trustful smile began straying over her face; but she suddenly pushed me away, and again fell to scanning me with a darkened look.
Suddenly she fell to embracing me.
"You love me, you love me, don't you?" she said. "Why, you . . . why, you . . . wanted to fight the Baron for my sake!"
And suddenly she burst out laughing—as though she had recalled something sweet and funny. She cried and laughed all at once. Well, what was I to do? I was in a fever myself. I remember she began saying something to me—but I could scarcely understand anything. It was a sort of delirium—a sort of babble as though she wanted to tell me something as rapidly as possible a delirium which was interrupted from time to time with the merriest laughter, which at last frightened me. "No, no; you are sweet, sweet," she repeated. "You are my faithful one!" And again she put her hand on my shoulders, again she looked at me and repeated, "You love me . . . love me . . . will love me?" I could not take my eyes off her; I had never seen her before in such a mood of love and
