A Gentle Creature by Fyodor Dostoevsky

AND that was just a few days ago, you know, five days, only five days-last Tuesday! No, no, if I'd had just a little more time, if she'd just waited a tiny bit longer I would have dispelled the darkness! And she had calmed down, hadn't she? The very next day she was listening to me with a smile, despite her bewilderment … The main point was that all that time, all the five days, she was a prey to bewilderment or embarrassment. She was afraid too, very much so. I won't argue, I won't be mad enough to deny it: there was fear, but it was perfectly understandable. After all, we had been alien to one another for so long, grown apart so far, then all at once, this … But I paid no attention to her fears, a new sun was shining!

It's true, indubitably true, that I committed an error. Perhaps a good many errors. As soon as we awoke the next day, first thing in the morning (this was on the Wednesday) I at once made a mistake: I immediately started treating her as a friend. I was in a hurry, far too much of a hurry, but I had to confess, more than confess, it was a driving necessity. I did not even dissemble what I had concealed from myself all my life. I told her plainly that for the whole of that winter the one thing I had been certain of was her love. I explained that the pawnbroking business had been merely the low ebb of my will and reason, a private notion of self-flagellation and self-glorification. I explained to her that I really had exhibited cowardice back then in the bar, that this reflected my character and mistrustful nature: I'd been overwhelmed by the situation, the bar, the thought of how to get out of it without appearing ridiculous. I wasn't afraid of a duel, but of fearing to seem ridiculous … Afterwards I had not wanted to admit all this, and had made everybody, including her, miserable on that account, and had even married her to make her life a misery because of it. Altogether I talked for the most part as if I were feverish. She herself took me by the hand and begged me to stop: ‘You're exaggerating … you're torturing yourself.' The tears would start again, bordering on hysteria! She kept begging me not to tell her of any of this, not keep bringing it back to mind.