Chapter 40

MY FRIENDSHIP WITH THE NECHLUDOFFS

That winter, too, I saw a great deal both of Dimitri who often
looked us up, and of his family, with whom I was beginning to
stand on intimate terms.

The Nechludoffs (that is to say, mother, aunt, and daughter)
always spent their evenings at home, at which time the Princess
liked young men to visit her--at all events young men of the kind
whom she described as able to spend an evening without playing
cards or dancing. Yet such young fellows must have been few and
far between, for, although I went to the Nechludoffs almost every
evening, I seldom found other guests present. Thus, I came to know
the members of this family and their several dispositions well
enough to be able to form clear ideas as to their mutual
relations, and to be quite at home amid the rooms and furniture
of their house. Indeed, so long as no other guests were present,
I felt entirely at my ease. True, at first I used to feel a
little uncomfortable when left alone in the room with Varenika,
for I could not rid myself of the idea that, though far from
pretty, she wished me to fall in love with her; but in time this
nervousness of mine began to lessen, since she always looked so
natural, and talked to me so exactly as though she were
conversing with her brother or Lubov Sergievna, that I came to
look upon her simply as a person to whom it was in no way
dangerous or wrong to show that I took pleasure in her company.
Throughout the whole of our acquaintance she appeared to me
merely a plain, though not positively ugly, girl, concerning whom
one would never ask oneself the question,

"Am I, or am I not, in love with her?" Sometimes I would talk to
her direct, but more often I did so through Dimitri or Lubov
Sergievna; and it was the latter method which afforded me the
most pleasure. I derived considerable gratification from
discoursing when she was there, from hearing her sing, and, in
general, from knowing that she was in the same room as myself;
but it was seldom now that any thoughts of what our future
relations might ever be, or that any dreams of self-sacrifice for
my friend if he should ever fall in love with my sister, came
into my head. If any such ideas or fancies occurred to me, I felt
satisfied with the present, and drove away all thoughts about the
future.

Yet, in spite of this intimacy, I continued to look upon it as my
bounden duty to keep the Nechludoffs in general, and Varenika in
particular, in ignorance of my true feelings and tastes, and
strove always to appear altogether another young man than what I
really was--to appear, indeed, such a young man as could never
possibly have existed. I affected to be "soulful" and would go