No More Learning

"My heart failed me," said she, "when they came to tell us that you were
going to draw swords on each other. How strange men are! For a word
forgotten the next week they are ready to cut each other's throats, and
to sacrifice not only their life, but their honour, and the happiness of
those who--But I am sure it was not you who began the quarrel; it was
Alexey Ivanytch who was the aggressor. "

"What makes you think so, Marya? "

"Why, because--because he is so sneering. I do not like Alexey Ivanytch;
I even dislike him. Yet, all the same, I should not have liked him to
dislike me; it would have made me very uneasy. "

"And what do you think, Marya Ivanofna, does he dislike you or no? "

Marya Ivanofna looked disturbed, and grew very red.

"I think," she said, at last, "I think he likes me. "

"Why? "

"Because he proposed to me. "

"Proposed to you! When? "

"Last year, two months before you came.
"

"And you did not consent? "

"As you see, Alexey Ivanytch is a man of wit, and of good family, to be
sure, well off, too; but only to think of being obliged to kiss him
before everybody under the marriage crown! No, no; nothing in the world
would induce me. "

The words of Marya Ivanofna enlightened me, and made many things clear
to me. I understood now why Chvabrine so persistently followed her up.
He had probably observed our mutual attraction, and was trying to detach
us one from another.

The words which had provoked our quarrel seemed to me the more infamous
when, instead of a rude and coarse joke, I saw in them a premeditated
calumny.

The wish to punish the barefaced liar took more entire possession of me,
and I awaited impatiently a favourable moment. I had not to wait long.
On the morrow, just as I was busy composing an elegy, and I was biting
my pen as I searched for a rhyme, Chvabrine tapped at my window. I laid
down the pen, and I took up my sword and left the house.

"Why delay any longer? " said Chvabrine. "They are not watching us any
more. Let us go to the river-bank; there nobody will interrupt us. "

We started in silence, and after having gone down a rugged path we
halted at the water's edge and crossed swords.