𝗪𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗻𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝟓 (𝐒𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐃 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓)

SECOND NIGHT

"Well, so you have survived!" she said, pressing both my hands.

"I've been here for the last two hours; you don't know what a state I have been in

all day."

"I know, I know. But to business. Do you know why I have come? Not to talk

nonsense, as I did yesterday. I tell you what, we must behave more sensibly in

future. I thought a great deal about it last night."

"In what way-in what must we be more sensible? I am ready for my part; but,

really, nothing more sensible has happened to me in my life than this, now."
"Really? In the first place, I beg you not to squeeze my hands so; secondly, I

must tell you that I spent a long time thinking about you and feeling doubtful to-

day."

"And how did it end?"

"How did it end? The upshot of it is that we must begin all over again, because

the conclusion I reached to-day was that I don't know you at all; that I behaved

like a baby last night, like a little girl; and, of course, the fact of it is, that it's my

soft heart that is to blame-that is, I sang my own praises, as one always does in

the end when one analyses one's conduct. And therefore to correct my mistake,

I've made up my mind to find out all about you minutely. But as I have no one

from whom I can find out anything, you must tell me everything fully yourself.

Well, what sort of man are you? Come, make haste-begin-tell me your whole

history."

"My history!" I cried in alarm. "My history! But who has told you I have a

history? I have no history...."

"Then how have you lived, if you have no history?" she interrupted, laughing.

"Absolutely without any history! I have lived, as they say, keeping myself to

myself, that is, utterly alone-alone, entirely alone. Do you know what it means

to be alone?"

"But how alone? Do you mean you never saw any one?"

"Oh no, I see people, of course; but still I am alone."

"Why, do you never talk to any one?"

"Strictly speaking, with no one."

"Who are you then? Explain yourself! Stay, I guess: most likely, like me you

have a grandmother. She is blind and will never let me go anywhere, so that I

have almost forgotten how to talk; and when I played some pranks two years

ago, and she saw there was no holding me in, she called me up and pinned my

dress to hers, and ever since we sit like that for days together; she knits a

stocking, though she's blind, and I sit beside her, sew or read aloud to her-it's

such a queer habit, here for two years I've been pinned to her...."