By putting together various aspects of the mistress’s attitude, I satisfied myself that I was fully trusted in this household. I even discovered proof that this trust had existed from the very first meeting. To my heart, which had begun to suspect others, this discovery rang with a strangeness bordering on the uncanny. I thought that, compared to men, women must simply be that much richer in intuition. At the same time, I thought that perhaps it is here, too, that women are deceived for the sake of men.
It is rather odd to think of now—that while I observed the mistress in this way, I was exercising the very same intuition all the more strongly toward the young lady. For I had sworn in my heart not to trust others, and yet I trusted the young lady absolutely. And yet, I found the mistress’s trust in me strange.
I did not speak much about my hometown. Especially regarding this recent affair, I said nothing at all. Merely bringing it to mind already gave me a kind of displeasure. I strove as much as possible to listen only to the mistress’s side of the conversation. But she would not have it. She wanted to know about my family circumstances back home, on every pretext. At last I told her everything. When I said that I would never return to my province again, and that even if I did there would be nothing there, only the graves of my father and mother, the mistress showed what seemed deep emotion. The young lady wept. I thought it good that I had spoken. I was happy.
Having heard all of me, the mistress put on a face that all but said her intuition had been right after all. From then on she treated me as if I were some young relation of hers. I was not even angry. I rather felt pleased. But then, in time, my suspicious heart stirred again.
My suspicion of the mistress began from the most trifling things. Yet as those trifles piled up, the doubt gradually took root. Somehow or other, it occurred to me that the mistress, in the same sense as my uncle, might be endeavoring to bring the young lady close to me. Then the person who had seemed kind until then suddenly appeared to my eyes as a cunning schemer. I bit my bitter lips.
From the start, the mistress had openly declared that, because it was uninhabited and lonely, she took in a guest to look after him. I did not think this a lie. Even after we grew close and I heard her candid talks, it seemed there had been no mistake there. Yet their general financial state was not such that one would call it very prosperous. Viewed from the angle of self-interest, forming a special relation with me was by no means a loss for them.
I grew wary again. But what good is it for me, who bore the fierce love for the daughter I spoke of before, to be ever so wary of her mother? I mocked myself alone. There were times I cursed myself, calling myself a fool. Yet if the contradiction were only that much, fool though I was, I might have borne it without much pain. My anguish began only when I met the question: might not the young lady, like the mistress, be a schemer too? When I thought that the two of them, after consulting behind my back, were managing everything, I was suddenly seized with a distress I could not bear. It was not mere unpleasantness. It was the feeling of a heart driven into a dead end, as if at the last extremity. And yet, on the other hand, I firmly believed in the young lady and doubted her not at all. Thus I stood midway between conviction and bewilderment, unable to move in the least. To me, either was imagination, and either was truth.
