"You must understand that I'm not jealous, that's a nasty word.
I can't be jealous, and believe that.... I can't say what I
feel, but this is awful.... I'm not jealous, but I'm wounded,
humiliated that anybody dare think, that anybody dare look at
you with eyes like that."
"Eyes like what?" said Kitty, trying as conscientiously as
possible to recall every word and gesture of that evening and
every shade implied in them.
At the very bottom of her heart she did think there had been
something precisely at the moment when he had crossed over after
her to the other end of the table; but she dared not own it even
to herself, and would have been even more unable to bring herself
to say so to him, and so increase his suffering.
"And what can there possibly be attractive about me as I am
now?..."
"Ah!" he cried, clutching at his head, "you shouldn't say
that!... If you had been attractive then..."
"Oh, no, Kostya, oh, wait a minute, oh, do listen!" she said,
looking at him with an expression of pained commiseration. "Why,
what can you be thinking about! When for me there's no one in
the world, no one, no one!... Would you like me never to see
anyone?"
For the first minute she had been offended at his jealousy; she
was angry that the slightest amusement, even the most innocent,
should be forbidden her; but now she would readily have
sacrificed, not merely such trifles, but everything, for his
peace of mind, to save him from the agony he was suffering.
"You must understand the horror and comedy of my position," he
went on in a desperate whisper; "that he's in my house, that he's
done nothing improper positively except his free and easy airs
and the way he sits on his legs. He thinks it's the best
possible form, and so I'm obliged to be civil to him."
"But, Kostya, you're exaggerating," said Kitty, at the bottom of
her heart rejoicing at the depth of his love for her, shown now
in his jealousy.
"The most awful part of it all is that you're just as you always
are, and especially now when to me you're something sacred, and
we're so happy, so particularly happy--and all of a sudden a
little wretch.... He's not a little wretch; why should I abuse
him? I have nothing to do with him. But why should my, and
your, happiness..."
"Do you know, I understand now what it's all come from," Kitty
was beginning.