I spent the next two or three days just as I was. Needless to say, during those two or three days an unceasing anxiety about K weighed heavily on my heart. As it was, I felt I had to do something, or I could never face him. On top of that, the mistress's manner and the young lady's attitude constantly pricked and provoked me, so that I suffered all the more. The mistress, who had something of a manly spirit about her, might at any time blurt out the matter of me at the dinner table to K. And the young lady's behavior toward me, which had seemed especially conspicuous ever since then, could not be declared impossible of becoming a seed of suspicious doubt to cloud K's mind. I was placed in a position where I had to somehow let K know of the new relationship that had come to be established between me and this family. But for one who, by his own admission, recognized his own ethical weakness, this too seemed an exceedingly difficult thing.
Having no other way, I thought of asking the mistress to tell K again on my behalf—of course when I was not present. But to have the truth told would differ only in being direct or indirect, and the disgrace would be no less. And if I were to have her tell some fabricated story, the mistress would surely press me for the reason. Were I to confide all the circumstances and entreat her, I would be willingly exposing my weakness before my beloved and her mother. To serious-minded me, this seemed nothing other than a matter touching my future credibility. To lose the trust of my fiancée before marriage, even by the slightest fraction, appeared to me an unbearable misfortune.
In short, I was a fool who, meaning to walk the honest path, had slipped and lost my footing—or perhaps a cunning man. And the only ones who knew of it at the time were Heaven and my own heart. Yet in trying to recover and take one more step forward, I had fallen into the desperate plight of having to let those around me know of my slip. I wanted at all costs to hide the fact that I had slipped. At the same time, I could by no means refrain from moving forward. Caught between the two, I stood frozen once more.
After five or six days had passed, the mistress suddenly asked me whether I had told K about it. I answered that I had not yet spoken. Then the mistress pressed me as to why I had not. I stiffened before the question. The words with which the mistress startled me then I remember to this day.
“No wonder he made such a strange face when I told him. You're not much good either, you know. For all the closeness you usually share, to say nothing and act as if you knew nothing—”
I asked the mistress whether K had said anything at the time. The mistress replied that he had not said anything in particular. Yet I could not help but press further with more detailed questions. The mistress, naturally, had no reason to hide anything. Saying it was nothing of much account, she described K's demeanor to me point by point.
Putting together what the mistress said, it seemed K had met this final blow with the calmest of surprises. Regarding the new relationship between the young lady and me, at first he had only said, “Is that so?”—just that one remark. But when the mistress said, “Please be happy for us,” he at last looked at her face, let a faint smile escape, and said, “Congratulations,” then rose from his seat. And before sliding open the sitting-room door, he turned back to the mistress and asked, “When is the wedding?” Then he said, “I would like to offer some congratulatory gift, but having no money, I cannot.” Sitting before the mistress, I heard this and felt a choking, crushing anguish in my breast.
