Good Lord! Why, he might marry a widow himself,
for instance! Therefore it is not that which prevents him, but the
confused notions with which his head is filled. And, as regards
yourself, if it were only possible for human beings to love once in
their lives, then, a second attempt to do so would certainly prove
futile and unpleasant. But this is not so. To fall in love, or to be
loved, is just as delightful and desirable. You will get to love
Novikoff, and, if you don't, well, we'll travel together, my
Lidotschka; one can live, can't one, anywhere, after all?"
Lida sighed and strove to overcome her final scruples.
"Perhaps ... everything will come right again," she murmured.
"Novikoff... he's so good and kind ... nice-looking, too, isn't he?
Yes ... no... I don't know what to say."
"If you had drowned yourself, what then? The powers of good and evil
would have neither gained nor lost thereby. Your corpse, bloated,
disfigured, and covered with slime, would have been dragged from the
river, and buried. That would have been all!"
Lida had a lurid vision of greenish, turbid water with slimy, trailing
weeds and gruesome bubbles floating round her.
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