XXXII

He found her in the shop with her mother. Frau Lenore was stooping down, measuring with a big folding foot-rule the space between the windows. On seeing Sanin, she stood up, and greeted him cheerfully, though with a shade of embarrassment.

'What you said yesterday,' she began, 'has set my head in a whirl with ideas as to how we could improve our shop. Here, I fancy we might put a couple of cupboards with shelves of looking-glass. You know, that's the fashion nowadays. And then ...'

'Excellent, excellent,' Sanin broke in, 'we must think it all over.... But come here, I want to tell you something.' He took Frau Lenpre and Gemma by the arm, and led them into the next room. Frau Lenore was alarmed, and the foot-rule slipped out of her hands. Gemma too was almost frightened, but she took an intent look at Sanin, and was reassured. His face, though preoccupied, expressed at the same time keen self-confidence and determination. He asked both the women to sit down, while he remained standing before them, and gesticulating with his hands and ruffling up his hair, he told them all his story; his meeting with Polozov, his proposed expedition to Wiesbaden, the chance of selling the estate. 'Imagine my happiness,' he cried in conclusion: 'things have taken such a turn that I may even, perhaps, not have to go to Russia! And we can have our wedding much sooner than I had anticipated!'

'When must you go?' asked Gemma.

'To-day, in an hour's time; my friend has ordered a carriage--he will take me.'

'You will write to us?'

'At once! directly I have had a talk with this lady, I will write.'

'This lady, you say, is very rich?' queried the practical Frau Lenore.

'Exceedingly rich! her father was a millionaire, and he left everything to her.'

'Everything--to her alone? Well, that's so much the better for you. Only mind, don't let your property go too cheap! Be sensible and firm. Don't let yourself be carried away! I understand your wishing to be Gemma's husband as soon as possible ... but prudence before everything! Don't forget: the better price you get for your estate, the more there will be for you two, and for your children.'

Gemma turned away, and Sanin gave another wave of his hand. 'You can rely on my prudence, Frau Lenore! Indeed, I shan't do any bargaining with her. I shall tell her the fair price; if she'll give it--good; if not, let her go.'

'Do you know her--this lady?' asked Gemma.

'I have never seen her.'

'And when will you come back?'

'If our negotiations come to nothing--the day after to-morrow; if they turn out favourably, perhaps I may have to stay a day or two longer. In any case I shall not linger a minute beyond what's necessary. I am leaving my heart here, you know! But I have said what I had to say to you, and I must run home before setting off too.... Give me your hand for luck, Frau Lenore--that's what we always do in Russia.'

'The right or the left?'

'The left, it's nearer the heart. I shall reappear the day after to-morrow with my shield or on it! Something tells me I shall come back in triumph! Good-bye, my good dear ones....'

He embraced and kissed Frau Lenore, but he asked Gemma to follow him into her room--for just a minute--as he must tell her something of great importance. He simply wanted to say good-bye to her alone. Frau Lenore saw that, and felt no curiosity as to the matter of such great importance.

Sanin had never been in Gemma's room before. All the magic of love, all its fire and rapture and sweet terror, seemed to flame up and burst into his soul, directly he crossed its sacred threshold.... He cast a look of tenderness about him, fell at the sweet girl's feet and pressed his face against her waist....

'You are mine,' she whispered: 'you will be back soon?'

'I am yours. I will come back,' he declared, catching his breath.

'I shall be longing for you back, my dear one!'

A few instants later Sanin was running along the street to his lodging. He did not even notice that Pantaleone, all dishevelled, had darted out of the shop-door after him, and was shouting something to him and was shaking, as though in menace, his lifted hand.

* * * * *

Exactly at a quarter to one Sanin presented himself before Polozov. The carriage with four horses was already standing at the hotel gates. On seeing Sanin, Polozov merely commented, 'Oh! you've made up your mind?' and putting on his hat, cloak, and over-shoes, and stuffing cotton-wool into his ears, though it was summer-time, went out on to the steps. The waiters, by his directions, disposed all his numerous purchases in the inside of the carriage, lined the place where he was to sit with silk cushions, bags, and bundles, put a hamper of provisions for his feet to rest on, and tied a trunk on to the box. Polozov paid with a liberal hand, and supported by the deferential door-keeper, whose face was still respectful, though he was unseen behind him, he climbed gasping into the carriage, sat down, disarranged everything about him thoroughly, took out and lighted a cigar, and only then extended a finger to Sanin, as though to say, 'Get in, you too!' Sanin placed himself beside him. Polozov sent orders by the door-keeper to the postillion to drive carefully--if he wanted drinks; the carriage steps grated, the doors slammed, and the carriage rolled off.

XXXIII

It takes less than an hour in these days by rail from Frankfort to Wiesbaden; at that time the extra post did it in three hours. They changed horses five times. Part of the time Polozov dozed and part of the time he simply shook from side to side, holding a cigar in his teeth; he talked very little; he did not once look out of the window; picturesque views did not interest them; he even announced that 'nature was the death of him!' Sanin did not speak either, nor did he admire the scenery; he had no thought for it. He was all absorbed in reflections and memories. At the stations Polozov paid with exactness, took the time by his watch, and tipped the postillions--more or less--according to their zeal. When they had gone half way, he took two oranges out of the hamper of edibles, and choosing out the better, offered the other to Sanin. Sanin looked steadily at his companion, and suddenly burst out laughing.

'What are you laughing at?' the latter inquired, very carefully peeling his orange with his short white nails.

'What at?' repeated Sanin. 'Why, at our journey together.'

'What about it?' Polozov inquired again, dropping into his mouth one of the longitudinal sections into which an orange parts.

'It's so very strange. Yesterday I must confess I thought no more of you than of the Emperor of China, and to-day I'm driving with you to sell my estate to your wife, of whom, too, I have not the slightest idea.'

'Anything may happen,' responded Polozov. 'When you've lived a bit longer, you won't be surprised at anything. For instance, can you fancy me riding as an orderly officer? But I did, and the Grand Duke Mihail Pavlovitch gave the order, 'Trot! let him trot, that fat cornet! Trot now! Look sharp!'

Sanin scratched behind his ear.

'Tell me, please, Ippolit Sidorovitch, what is your wife like? What is her character? It's very necessary for me to know that, you see.'

'It was very well for him to shout, "Trot!"' Polozov went on with sudden vehemence, 'But me! how about me? I thought to myself, "You can take your honours and epaulettes--and leave me in peace!" But ... you asked about my wife? What my wife is? A person like any one else. Don't wear your heart upon your sleeve with her--she doesn't like that. The great thing is to talk a lot to her ... something for her to laugh at. Tell her about your love, or something ... but make it more amusing, you know.'

'How more amusing?'

'Oh, you told me, you know, that you were in love, wanting to get married. Well, then, describe that.'

Sanin was offended. 'What do you find laughable in that?'

Polozov only rolled his eyes. The juice from the orange was trickling down his chin.

'Was it your wife sent you to Frankfort to shop for her?' asked Sanin after a short time.

'Yes, it was she.'

'What are the purchases?'

'Toys, of course.'

'Toys? have you any children?'

Polozov positively moved away from Sanin.

'That's likely! What do I want with children? Feminine fallals ... finery. For the toilet.'

'Do you mean to say you understand such things?'

'To be sure I do.'

'But didn't you tell me you didn't interfere in any of your wife's affairs?'

'I don't in any other. But this ... is no consequence. To pass the time--one may do it. And my wife has confidence in my taste. And I'm a first-rate hand at bargaining.'

Polozov began to speak by jerks; he was exhausted already. 'And is your wife very rich?'

'Rich; yes, rather! Only she keeps the most of it for herself.'

'But I expect you can't complain either?'

'Well, I'm her husband. I'm hardly likely not to get some benefit from it! And I'm of use to her. With me she can do just as she likes! I'm easy-going!'

Polozov wiped his face with a silk handkerchief and puffed painfully, as though to say, 'Have mercy on me; don't force me to utter another word. You see how hard it is for me.'

Sanin left him in peace, and again sank into meditation.

* * * * *

The hotel in Wiesbaden, before which the carriage stopped, was exactly like a palace. Bells were promptly set ringing in its inmost recesses; a fuss and bustle arose; men of good appearance in black frock-coats skipped out at the principal entrance; a door-keeper who was a blaze of gold opened the carriage doors with a flourish.

Like some triumphant general Polozov alighted and began to ascend a staircase strewn with rugs and smelling of agreeable perfumes. To him flew up another man, also very well dressed but with a Russian face--his valet. Polozov observed to him that for the future he should always take him everywhere with him, for the night before at Frankfort, he, Polozov, had been left for the night without hot water! The valet portrayed his horror on his face, and bending down quickly, took off his master's goloshes.

'Is Maria Nikolaevna at home?' inquired Polozov.

'Yes, sir. Madam is pleased to be dressing. Madam is pleased to be dining to-night at the Countess Lasunsky's.'

'Ah! there?... Stay! There are things there in the carriage; get them all yourself and bring them up. And you, Dmitri Pavlovitch,' added Polozov, 'take a room for yourself and come in in three-quarters of an hour. We will dine together.'

Polozov waddled off, while Sanin asked for an inexpensive room for himself; and after setting his attire to rights, and resting a little, he repaired to the immense apartment occupied by his Serenity (Durchlaucht) Prince von Polozov.

He found this 'prince' enthroned in a luxurious velvet arm-chair in the middle of a most magnificent drawing-room. Sanin's phlegmatic friend had already had time to have a bath and to array himself in a most sumptuous satin dressing-gown; he had put a crimson fez on his head. Sanin approached him and scrutinised him for some time. Polozov was sitting rigid as an idol; he did not even turn his face in his direction, did not even move an eyebrow, did not utter a sound. It was truly a sublime spectacle! After having admired him for a couple of minutes, Sanin was on the point of speaking, of breaking this hallowed silence, when suddenly the door from the next room was thrown open, and in the doorway appeared a young and beautiful lady in a white silk dress trimmed with black lace, and with diamonds on her arms and neck--Maria Nikolaevna Polozov. Her thick fair hair fell on both sides of her head, braided, but not fastened up into a knot.

XXXIV

'Ah, I beg your pardon!' she said with a smile half-embarrassed, half-ironical, instantly taking hold of one end of a plait of her hair and fastening on Sanin her large, grey, clear eyes.

'I did not think you had come yet.'

'Sanin, Dmitri Pavlovitch--known him from a boy,' observed Polozov, as before not turning towards him and not getting up, but pointing at him with one finger.

'Yes.... I know.... You told me before. Very glad to make your acquaintance. But I wanted to ask you, Ippolit Sidorovitch.... My maid seems to have lost her senses to-day ...'

'To do your hair up?'

'Yes, yes, please. I beg your pardon,' Maria Nikolaevna repeated with the same smile. She nodded to Sanin, and turning swiftly, vanished through the doorway, leaving behind her a fleeting but graceful impression of a charming neck, exquisite shoulders, an exquisite figure.

Polozov got up, and rolling ponderously, went out by the same door.

Sanin did not doubt for a single second that his presence in 'Prince Polozov's' drawing-room was a fact perfectly well known to its mistress; the whole point of her entry had been the display of her hair, which was certainly beautiful. Sanin was inwardly delighted indeed at this freak on the part of Madame Polozov; if, he thought, she is anxious to impress me, to dazzle me, perhaps, who knows, she will be accommodating about the price of the estate. His heart was so full of Gemma that all other women had absolutely no significance for him; he hardly noticed them; and this time he went no further than thinking, 'Yes, it was the truth they told me; that lady's really magnificent to look at!'

But had he not been in such an exceptional state of mind he would most likely have expressed himself differently; Maria Nikolaevna Polozov, by birth Kolishkin, was a very striking personality. And not that she was of a beauty to which no exception could be taken; traces of her plebeian origin were rather clearly apparent in her. Her forehead was low, her nose rather fleshy and turned up; she could boast neither of the delicacy of her skin nor of the elegance of her hands and feet--but what did all that matter? Any one meeting her would not, to use Pushkin's words, have stood still before 'the holy shrine of beauty,' but before the sorcery of a half-Russian, half-Gipsy woman's body in its full flower and full power ... and he would have been nothing loath to stand still!

But Gemma's image preserved Sanin like the three-fold armour of which the poets sing.

Ten minutes later Maria Nikolaevna appeared again, escorted by her husband. She went up to Sanin ... and her walk was such that some eccentrics of that--alas!--already, distant day, were simply crazy over her walk alone. 'That woman, when she comes towards one, seems as though she is bringing all the happiness of one's life to meet one,' one of them used to say. She went up to Sanin, and holding out her hand to him, said in her caressing and, as it were, subdued voice in Russian, 'You will wait for me, won't you? I'll be back soon.'

Sanin bowed respectfully, while Maria Nikolaevna vanished behind the curtain over the outside door; and as she vanished turned her head back over her shoulder, and smiled again, and again left behind her the same impression of grace.

When she smiled, not one and not two, but three dimples came out on each cheek, and her eyes smiled more than her lips--long, crimson, juicy lips with two tiny moles on the left side of them.

Polozov waddled into the room and again established himself in the arm-chair. He was speechless as before; but from time to time a queer smile puffed out his colourless and already wrinkled cheeks. He looked like an old man, though he was only three years older than Sanin.

The dinner with which he regaled his guest would of course have satisfied the most exacting gourmand, but to Sanin it seemed endless, insupportable! Polozov ate slowly, 'with feeling, with judgment, with deliberation,' bending attentively over his plate, and sniffing at almost every morsel. First he rinsed his mouth with wine, then swallowed it and smacked his lips.... Over the roast meat he suddenly began to talk--but of what? Of merino sheep, of which he was intending to order a whole flock, and in such detail, with such tenderness, using all the while endearing pet names for them. After drinking a cup of coffee, hot to boiling point (he had several times in a voice of tearful irritation mentioned to the waiter that he had been served the evening before with coffee, cold--cold as ice!) and bitten off the end of a Havannah cigar with his crooked yellow teeth, he dropped off, as his habit was, into a nap, to the intense delight of Sanin, who began walking up and down with noiseless steps on the soft carpet, and dreaming of his life with Gemma and of what news he would bring back to her. Polozov, however, awoke, as he remarked himself, earlier than usual--he had slept only an hour and a half--and after drinking a glass of iced seltzer water, and swallowing eight spoonfuls of jam, Russian jam, which his valet brought him in a dark-green genuine 'Kiev' jar, and without which, in his own words, he could not live, he stared with his swollen eyes at Sanin and asked him wouldn't he like to play a game of 'fools' with him. Sanin agreed readily; he was afraid that Polozov would begin talking again about lambs and ewes and fat tails. The host and the visitor both adjourned to the drawing-room, the waiter brought in the cards, and the game began, not,--of course, for money.

At this innocent diversion Maria Nikolaevna found them on her return from the Countess Lasunsky's. She laughed aloud directly she came into the room and saw the cards and the open card-table. Sanin jumped up, but she cried, 'Sit still; go on with the game. I'll change my dress directly and come back to you,' and vanished again with a swish of her dress, pulling off her gloves as she went.

She did in fact return very soon. Her evening dress she had exchanged for a full lilac silk tea-gown, with open hanging sleeves; a thick twisted cord was fastened round her waist. She sat down by her husband, and, waiting till he was left 'fool,' said to him, 'Come, dumpling, that's enough!' (At the word 'dumpling' Sanin glanced at her in surprise, and she smiled gaily, answering his look with a look, and displaying all the dimples on her cheeks.) 'I see you are sleepy; kiss my hand and get along; and Monsieur Sanin and I will have a chat together alone.'

'I'm not sleepy,' observed Polozov, getting up ponderously from his easy-chair; 'but as for getting along, I'm ready to get along and to kiss your hand.' She gave him the palm of her hand, still smiling and looking at Sanin.

Polozov, too, looked at him, and went away without taking leave of him.

'Well, tell me, tell me,' said Maria Nikolaevna eagerly, setting both her bare elbows on the table and impatiently tapping the nails of one hand against the nails of the other, 'Is it true, they say, you are going to be married?'

As she said these words, Maria Nikolaevna positively bent her head a little on one side so as to look more intently and piercingly into Sanin's eyes.

XXXV

The free and easy deportment of Madame Polozov would probably for the first moment have disconcerted Sanin--though he was not quite a novice and had knocked about the world a little--if he had not again seen in this very freedom and familiarity a good omen for his undertaking. 'We must humour this rich lady's caprices,' he decided inwardly; and as unconstrainedly as she had questioned him he answered, 'Yes; I am going to be married.'

'To whom? To a foreigner?'

'Yes.'

'Did you get acquainted with her lately? In Frankfort?'

'Yes.'

'And what is she? May I know?'

'Certainly. She is a confectioner's daughter.'

Maria Nikolaevna opened her eyes wide and lifted her eyebrows.

'Why, this is delightful,' she commented in a drawling voice; 'this is exquisite! I imagined that young men like you were not to be met with anywhere in these days. A confectioner's daughter!'

'I see that surprises you,' observed Sanin with some dignity; 'but in the first place, I have none of these prejudices ...'

'In the first place, it doesn't surprise me in the least,' Maria Nikolaevna interrupted; 'I have no prejudices either. I'm the daughter of a peasant myself. There! what can you say to that? What does surprise and delight me is to have come across a man who's not afraid to love. You do love her, I suppose?'

'Yes.'

'Is she very pretty?'

Sanin was slightly stung by this last question.... However, there was no drawing back.

'You know, Maria Nikolaevna,' he began, 'every man thinks the face of his beloved better than all others; but my betrothed is really beautiful.'

'Really? In what style? Italian? antique?'

'Yes; she has very regular features.'

'You have not got her portrait with you?'

'No.' (At that time photography was not yet talked off. Daguerrotypes had hardly begun to be common.)

'What's her name?'

'Her name is Gemma.'

'And yours?'

'Dimitri.'

'And your father's?'

'Pavlovitch.'

'Do you know,' Maria Nikolaevna said, still in the same drawling voice, 'I like you very much, Dimitri Pavlovitch. You must be an excellent fellow. Give me your hand. Let us be friends.'

She pressed his hand tightly in her beautiful, white, strong fingers. Her hand was a little smaller than his hand, but much warmer and smoother and whiter and more full of life.

'Only, do you know what strikes me?'

'What?'

'You won't be angry? No? You say she is betrothed to you. But was that ... was that quite necessary?'

Sanin frowned. 'I don't understand you, Maria Nikolaevna.'

Maria Nikolaevna gave a soft low laugh, and shaking her head tossed back the hair that was falling on her cheeks. 'Decidedly--he's delightful,' she commented half pensively, half carelessly. 'A perfect knight! After that, there's no believing in the people who maintain that the race of idealists is extinct!'

Maria Nikolaevna talked Russian all the time, an astonishingly pure true Moscow Russian, such as the people, not the nobles speak.

'You've been brought up at home, I expect, in a God-fearing, old orthodox family?' she queried. 'You're from what province?'

'Tula.'

'Oh! so we're from the same part. My father ... I daresay you know who my father was?'

'Yes, I know.'

'He was born in Tula.... He was a Tula man. Well ... well. Come, let us get to business now.'

'That is ... how come to business? What do you mean to say by that?'

Maria Nikolaevna half-closed her eyes. 'Why, what did you come here for?' (when she screwed up her eyes, their expression became very kindly and a little bantering, when she opened them wide, into their clear, almost cold brilliancy, there came something-ill-natured ... something menacing. Her eyes gained a peculiar beauty from her eyebrows, which were thick, and met in the centre, and had the smoothness of sable fur). 'Don't you want me to buy your estate? You want money for your nuptials? Don't you?'

'Yes.'

'And do you want much?'

'I should be satisfied with a few thousand francs at first. Your husband knows my estate. You can consult him--I would take a very moderate price.'

Maria Nikolaevna tossed her head from left to right. 'In the first place,' she began in deliberate tones, drumming with the tips of her fingers on the cuff of Sanin's coat, 'I am not in the habit of consulting my husband, except about matters of dress--he's my right hand in that; and in the second place, why do you say that you will fix a low price? I don't want to take advantage of your being very much in love at the moment, and ready to make any sacrifices.... I won't accept sacrifices of any kind from you. What? Instead of encouraging you ... come, how is one to express it properly?--in your noble sentiments, eh? am I to fleece you? that's not my way. I can be hard on people, on occasion--only not in that way.'

Sanin was utterly unable to make out whether she was laughing at him or speaking seriously, and only said to himself: 'Oh, I can see one has to mind what one's about with you!'

A man-servant came in with a Russian samovar, tea-things, cream, biscuits, etc., on a big tray; he set all these good things on the table between Sanin and Madame Polozov, and retired.

She poured him out a cup of tea. 'You don't object?' she queried, as she put sugar in his cup with her fingers ... though sugar-tongs were lying close by.

'Oh, please!... From such a lovely hand ...'

He did not finish his phrase, and almost choked over a sip of tea, while she watched him attentively and brightly.

'I spoke of a moderate price for my land,' he went on, 'because as you are abroad just now, I can hardly suppose you have a great deal of cash available, and in fact, I feel myself that the sale ... the purchase of my land, under such conditions is something exceptional, and I ought to take that into consideration.'

Sanin got confused, and lost the thread of what he was saying, while Maria Nikolaevna softly leaned back in her easy-chair, folded her arms, and watched him with the same attentive bright look. He was silent at last.

'Never mind, go on, go on,' she said, as it were coming to his aid; 'I'm listening to you. I like to hear you; go on talking.'

Sanin fell to describing his estate, how many acres it contained, and where it was situated, and what were its agricultural advantages, and what profit could be made from it ... he even referred to the picturesque situation of the house; while Maria Nikolaevna still watched him, and watched more and more intently and radiantly, and her lips faintly stirred, without smiling: she bit them. He felt awkward at last; he was silent a second time.

'Dimitri Pavlovitch' began Maria Nikolaevna, and sank into thought again.... 'Dimitri Pavlovitch,' she repeated.... 'Do you know what: I am sure the purchase of your estate will be a very profitable transaction for me, and that we shall come to terms; but you must give me two days.... Yes, two days' grace. You are able to endure two days' separation from your betrothed, aren't you? Longer I won't keep you against your will--I give you my word of honour. But if you want five or six thousand francs at once, I am ready with great pleasure to let you have it as a loan, and then we'll settle later.'

Sanin got up. 'I must thank you, Maria Nikolaevna, for your kindhearted and friendly readiness to do a service to a man almost unknown to you. But if that is your decided wish, then I prefer to await your decision about my estate--I will stay here two days.'

'Yes; that is my wish, Dimitri Pavlovitch. And will it be very hard for you? Very? Tell me.'

'I love my betrothed, Maria Nikolaevna, and to be separated from her is hard for me.'

'Ah! you're a heart of gold!' Maria Nikolaevna commented with a sigh. 'I promise not to torment you too much. Are you going?'

'It is late,' observed Sanin.

'And you want to rest after your journey, and your game of "fools" with my husband. Tell me, were you a great friend of Ippolit Sidorovitch, my husband?'

'We were educated at the same school.'

'And was he the same then?'

'The same as what?' inquired Sanin. Maria Nikolaevna burst out laughing, and laughed till she was red in the face; she put her handkerchief to her lips, rose from her chair, and swaying as though she were tired, went up to Sanin, and held out her hand to him.

He bowed over it, and went towards the door.

'Come early to-morrow--do you hear?' she called after him. He looked back as he went out of the room, and saw that she had again dropped into an easy-chair, and flung both arms behind her head. The loose sleeves of her tea-gown fell open almost to her shoulders, and it was impossible not to admit that the pose of the arms, that the whole figure, was enchantingly beautiful.

XXXVI

Long after midnight the lamp was burning in Sanin's room. He sat down to the table and wrote to 'his Gemma.' He told her everything; he described the Polozovs--husband and wife--but, more than all, enlarged on his own feelings, and ended by appointing a meeting with her in three days!!! (with three marks of exclamation). Early in the morning he took this letter to the post, and went for a walk in the garden of the Kurhaus, where music was already being played. There were few people in it as yet; he stood before the arbour in which the orchestra was placed, listened to an adaptation of airs from 'Robert le Diable,' and after drinking some coffee, turned into a solitary side walk, sat down on a bench, and fell into a reverie. The handle of a parasol gave him a rapid, and rather vigorous, thump on the shoulder. He started.... Before him in a light, grey-green barége dress, in a white tulle hat, and suède gloves, stood Maria Nikolaevna, fresh and rosy as a summer morning, though the languor of sound unbroken sleep had not yet quite vanished from her movements and her eyes.

'Good-morning,' she said. 'I sent after you to-day, but you'd already gone out. I've only just drunk my second glass--they're making me drink the water here, you know--whatever for, there's no telling ... am I not healthy enough? And now I have to walk for a whole hour. Will you be my companion? And then we'll have some coffee.'

'I've had some already,' Sanin observed, getting up; 'but I shall be very glad to have a walk with you.'

'Very well, give me your arm then; don't be afraid: your betrothed is not here--she won't see you.'

Sanin gave a constrained smile. He experienced a disagreeable sensation every time Maria Nikolaevna referred to Gemma. However, he made haste to bend towards her obediently.... Maria Nikolaevna's arm slipped slowly and softly into his arm, and glided over it, and seemed to cling tight to it.

'Come--this way,' she said to him, putting up her open parasol over her shoulder. 'I'm quite at home in this park; I will take you to the best places. And do you know what? (she very often made use of this expression), we won't talk just now about that sale, we'll have a thorough discussion of that after lunch; but you must tell me now about yourself ... so that I may know whom I have to do with. And afterwards, if you like, I will tell you about myself. Do you agree?'

'But, Maria Nikolaevna, what interest can there be for you ...'

'Stop, stop. You don't understand me. I don't want to flirt with you.' Maria Nikolaevna shrugged her shoulders. 'He's got a betrothed like an antique statue, is it likely I am going to flirt with him? But you've something to sell, and I'm the purchaser. I want to know what your goods are like. Well, of course, you must show what they are like. I don't only want to know what I'm buying, but whom I'm buying from. That was my father's rule. Come, begin ... come, if not from childhood--come now, have you been long abroad? And where have you been up till now? Only don't walk so fast, we're in no hurry.'

'I came here from Italy, where I spent several months.'

'Ah, you feel, it seems, a special attraction towards everything Italian. It's strange you didn't find your lady-love there. Are you fond of art? of pictures? or more of music?'

'I am fond of art.... I like everything beautiful.'

'And music?'

'I like music too.'

'Well, I don't at all. I don't care for anything but Russian songs--and that in the country and in the spring--with dancing, you know ... red shirts, wreaths of beads, the young grass in the meadows, the smell of smoke ... delicious! But we weren't talking of me. Go on, tell me.'

Maria Nikolaevna walked on, and kept looking at Sanin. She was tall--her face was almost on a level with his face.

He began to talk--at first reluctantly, unskilfully--but afterwards he talked more freely, chattered away in fact. Maria Nikolaevna was a very good listener; and moreover she seemed herself so frank, that she led others unconsciously on to frankness. She possessed that great gift of 'intimateness'--le terrible don de la familiarité--to which Cardinal Retz refers. Sanin talked of his travels, of his life in Petersburg, of his youth.... Had Maria Nikolaevna been a lady of fashion, with refined manners, he would never have opened out so; but she herself spoke of herself as a 'good fellow,' who had no patience with ceremony of any sort; it was in those words that she characterised herself to Sanin. And at the same time this 'good fellow' walked by his side with feline grace, slightly bending towards him, and peeping into his face; and this 'good fellow' walked in the form of a young feminine creature, full of the tormenting, fiery, soft and seductive charm, of which--for the undoing of us poor weak sinful men--only Slav natures are possessed, and but few of them, and those never of pure Slav blood, with no foreign alloy. Sanin's walk with Maria Nikolaevna, Sanin's talk with Maria Nikolaevna lasted over an hour. And they did not stop once; they kept walking about the endless avenues of the park, now mounting a hill and admiring the view as they went, and now going down into the valley, and getting hidden in the thick shadows,--and all the while arm-in-arm. At times Sanin felt positively irritated; he had never walked so long with Gemma, his darling Gemma ... but this lady had simply taken possession of him, and there was no escape! 'Aren't you tired?' he said to her more than once. 'I never get tired,' she answered. Now and then they met other people walking in the park; almost all of them bowed--some respectfully, others even cringingly. To one of them, a very handsome, fashionably dressed dark man, she called from a distance with the best Parisian accent, 'Comte, vous savez, il ne faut pas venir me voir--ni aujourd'hui ni demain.' The man took off his hat, without speaking, and dropped a low bow.

'Who's that?' asked Sanin with the bad habit of asking questions characteristic of all Russians.

'Oh, a Frenchman, there are lots of them here ... He's dancing attendance on me too. It's time for our coffee, though. Let's go home; you must be hungry by this time, I should say. My better half must have got his eye-peeps open by now.'

'Better half! Eye-peeps!' Sanin repeated to himself ... 'And speaks French so well ... what a strange creature!'

* * * * *

Maria Nikolaevna was not mistaken. When she went back into the hotel with Sanin, her 'better half or 'dumpling' was already seated, the invariable fez on his head, before a table laid for breakfast.

'I've been waiting for you!' he cried, making a sour face. 'I was on the point of having coffee without you.'

'Never mind, never mind,' Maria Nikolaevna responded cheerfully. 'Are you angry? That's good for you; without that you'd turn into a mummy altogether. Here I've brought a visitor. Make haste and ring! Let us have coffee--the best coffee--in Saxony cups on a snow-white cloth!'

She threw off her hat and gloves, and clapped her hands.

Polozov looked at her from under his brows.

'What makes you so skittish to-day, Maria Nikolaevna?' he said in an undertone.

'That's no business of yours, Ippolit Sidoritch! Ring! Dimitri Pavlovitch, sit down and have some coffee for the second time. Ah, how nice it is to give orders! There's no pleasure on earth like it!'

'When you're obeyed,' grumbled her husband again.

'Just so, when one's obeyed! That's why I'm so happy! Especially with you. Isn't it so, dumpling? Ah, here's the coffee.'

On the immense tray, which the waiter brought in, there lay also a playbill. Maria Nikolaevna snatched it up at once.

'A drama!' she pronounced with indignation, 'a German drama. No matter; it's better than a German comedy. Order a box for me--baignoire--or no ... better the Fremden-Loge,' she turned to the waiter. 'Do you hear: the Fremden-Loge it must be!'

'But if the Fremden-Loge has been already taken by his excellency, the director of the town (seine Excellenz der Herr Stadt-Director),' the waiter ventured to demur.

'Give his excellency ten thalers, and let the box be mine! Do you hear!'

The waiter bent his head humbly and mournfully.

'Dimitri Pavlovitch, you will go with me to the theatre? the German actors are awful, but you will go ... Yes? Yes? How obliging you are! Dumpling, are you not coming?

'You settle it,' Polozov observed into the cup he had lifted to his lips.

'Do you know what, you stay at home. You always go to sleep at the theatre, and you don't understand much German. I'll tell you what you'd better do, write an answer to the overseer--you remember, about our mill ... about the peasants' grinding. Tell him that I won't have it, and I won't and that's all about it! There's occupation for you for the whole evening.'

'All right,' answered Polozov.

'Well then, that's first-rate. You're a darling. And now, gentlemen, as we have just been speaking of my overseer, let's talk about our great business. Come, directly the waiter has cleared the table, you shall tell me all, Dimitri Pavlovitch, about your estate, what price you will sell it for, how much you want paid down in advance, everything, in fact! (At last, thought Sanin, thank God!) You have told me something about it already, you remember, you described your garden delightfully, but dumpling wasn't here.... Let him hear, he may pick a hole somewhere! I'm delighted to think that I can help you to get married, besides, I promised you that I would go into your business after lunch, and I always keep my promises, isn't that the truth, Ippolit Sidoritch?'

Polozov rubbed his face with his open hand. 'The truth's the truth. You don't deceive any one.'

'Never! and I never will deceive any one. Well, Dimitri Pavlovitch, expound the case as we express it in the senate.'

XXXVII

Sanin proceeded to expound his case, that is to say, again, a second time, to describe his property, not touching this time on the beauties of nature, and now and then appealing to Polozov for confirmation of his 'facts and figures.' But Polozov simply gasped and shook his head, whether in approval or disapproval, it would have puzzled the devil, one might fancy, to decide. However, Maria Nikolaevna stood in no need of his aid. She exhibited commercial and administrative abilities that were really astonishing! She was familiar with all the ins-and-outs of farming; she asked questions about everything with great exactitude, went into every point; every word of hers went straight to the root of the matter, and hit the nail on the head. Sanin had not expected such a close inquiry, he had not prepared himself for it. And this inquiry lasted for fully an hour and a half. Sanin experienced all the sensations of the criminal on his trial, sitting on a narrow bench confronted by a stern and penetrating judge. 'Why, it's a cross-examination!' he murmured to himself dejectedly. Maria Nikolaevna kept laughing all the while, as though it were a joke; but Sanin felt none the more at ease for that; and when in the course of the 'cross-examination' it turned out that he had not clearly realised the exact meaning of the words 'repartition' and 'tilth,' he was in a cold perspiration all over.

'Well, that's all right!' Maria Nikolaevna decided at last. 'I know your estate now ... as well as you do. What price do you suggest per soul?' (At that time, as every one knows, the prices of estates were reckoned by the souls living as serfs on them.)

'Well ... I imagine ... I could not take less than five hundred roubles for each,' Sanin articulated with difficulty. O Pantaleone, Pantaleone, where were you! This was when you ought to have cried again, 'Barbari!'

Maria Nikolaevna turned her eyes upwards as though she were calculating.

'Well?' she said at last. 'I think there's no harm in that price. But I reserved for myself two days' grace, and you must wait till to-morrow. I imagine we shall come to an arrangement, and then you will tell me how much you want paid down. And now, basta cosi!' she cried, noticing Sanin was about to make some reply. 'We've spent enough time over filthy lucre ... à demain les affaires. Do you know what, I'll let you go now ... (she glanced at a little enamelled watch, stuck in her belt) ... till three o'clock ... I must let you rest. Go and play roulette.'

'I never play games of chance,' observed Sanin.

'Really? Why, you're a paragon. Though I don't either. It's stupid throwing away one's money when one's no chance. But go into the gambling saloon, and look at the faces. Very comic ones there are there. There's one old woman with a rustic headband and a moustache, simply delicious! Our prince there's another, a good one too. A majestic figure with a nose like an eagle's, and when he puts down a thaler, he crosses himself under his waistcoat. Read the papers, go a walk, do what you like, in fact. But at three o'clock I expect you ... de pied ferme. We shall have to dine a little earlier. The theatre among these absurd Germans begins at half-past six. She held out her hand. 'Sans rancune, n'est-ce pas?'

'Really, Maria Nikolaevna, what reason have I to be annoyed?'

'Why, because I've been tormenting you. Wait a little, you'll see. There's worse to come,' she added, fluttering her eyelids, and all her dimples suddenly came out on her flushing cheeks. 'Till we meet!'

Sanin bowed and went out. A merry laugh rang out after him, and in the looking-glass which he was passing at that instant, the following scene was reflected: Maria Nikolaevna had pulled her husband's fez over his eyes, and he was helplessly struggling with both hands.

XXXVIII

Oh, what a deep sigh of delight Sanin heaved, when he found himself in his room! Indeed, Maria Nikolaevna had spoken the truth, he needed rest, rest from all these new acquaintances, collisions, conversations, from this suffocating atmosphere which was affecting his head and his heart, from this enigmatical, uninvited intimacy with a woman, so alien to him! And when was all this taking place? Almost the day after he had learnt that Gemma loved him, after he had become betrothed to her. Why, it was sacrilege! A thousand times he mentally asked forgiveness of his pure chaste dove, though he could not really blame himself for anything; a thousand times over he kissed the cross she had given him. Had he not the hope of bringing the business, for which he had come to Wiesbaden, to a speedy and successful conclusion, he would have rushed off headlong, back again, to sweet Frankfort, to that dear house, now his own home, to her, to throw himself at her loved feet.... But there was no help for it! The cup must be drunk to the dregs, he must dress, go to dinner, and from there to the theatre.... If only she would let him go to-morrow!

One other thing confounded him, angered him; with love, with tenderness, with grateful transport he dreamed of Gemma, of their life together, of the happiness awaiting him in the future, and yet this strange woman, this Madame Polozov persistently floated--no! not floated, poked herself, so Sanin with special vindictiveness expressed it--poked herself in and faced his eyes, and he could not rid himself of her image, could not help hearing her voice, recalling her words, could not help being aware even of the special scent, delicate, fresh and penetrating, like the scent of yellow lilies, that was wafted from her garments. This lady was obviously fooling him, and trying in every way to get over him ... what for? what did she want? Could it be merely the caprice of a spoiled, rich, and most likely unprincipled woman? And that husband! What a creature he was! What were his relations with her? And why would these questions keep coming into his head, when he, Sanin, had really no interest whatever in either Polozov or his wife? Why could he not drive away that intrusive image, even when he turned with his whole soul to another image, clear and bright as God's sunshine? How, through those almost divine features, dare those others force themselves upon him? And not only that; those other features smiled insolently at him. Those grey, rapacious eyes, those dimples, those snake-like tresses, how was it all that seemed to cleave to him, and to shake it all off, and fling it away, he was unable, had not the power?

Nonsense! nonsense! to-morrow it would all vanish and leave no trace.... But would she let him go to-morrow?

Yes.... All these question he put to himself, but the time was moving on to three o'clock, and he put on a black frockcoat and after a turn in the park, went in to the Polozovs!

* * * * *

He found in their drawing-room a secretary of the legation, a very tall light-haired German, with the profile of a horse, and his hair parted down the back of his head (at that time a new fashion), and ... oh, wonder! whom besides? Von Dönhof, the very officer with whom he had fought a few days before! He had not the slightest expectation of meeting him there and could not help being taken aback. He greeted him, however.

'Are you acquainted?' asked Maria Nikolaevna who had not failed to notice Sanin's embarrassment.

'Yes ... I have already had the honour,' said Dönhof, and bending a little aside, in an undertone he added to Maria Nikolaevna, with a smile, 'The very man ... your compatriot ... the Russian ...'

'Impossible!' she exclaimed also in an undertone; she shook her finger at him, and at once began to bid good-bye both to him and the long secretary, who was, to judge by every symptom, head over ears in love with her; he positively gaped every time he looked at her. Dönhof promptly took leave with amiable docility, like a friend of the family who understands at half a word what is expected of him; the secretary showed signs of restiveness, but Maria Nikolaevna turned him out without any kind of ceremony.

'Get along to your sovereign mistress,' she said to him (there was at that time in Wiesbaden a certain princess di Monaco, who looked surprisingly like a cocotte of the poorer sort); 'what do you want to stay with a plebeian like me for?'

'Really, dear madam,' protested the luckless secretary,' all the princesses in the world....'

But Maria Nikolaevna was remorseless, and the secretary went away, parting and all.

Maria Nikolaevna was dressed that day very much 'to her advantage,' as our grandmothers used to say. She wore a pink glacé silk dress, with sleeves à la Fontange, and a big diamond in each ear. Her eyes sparkled as much as her diamonds; she seemed in a good humour and in high spirits.

She made Sanin sit beside her, and began talking to him about Paris, where she was intending to go in a few days, of how sick she was of Germans, how stupid they were when they tried to be clever, and how inappropriately clever sometimes when they were stupid; and suddenly, point-blank, as they say--à brûle pourpoint--asked him, was it true that he had fought a duel with the very officer who had been there just now, only a few days ago, on account of a lady?

'How did you know that?' muttered Sanin, dumfoundered.

'The earth is full of rumours, Dimitri Pavlovitch; but anyway, I know you were quite right, perfectly right, and behaved like a knight. Tell me, was that lady your betrothed?'

Sanin slightly frowned ...

'There, I won't, I won't,' Maria Nikolaevna hastened to say. 'You don't like it, forgive me, I won't do it, don't be angry!' Polozov came in from the next room with a newspaper in his hand. 'What do you want? Or is dinner ready?'

'Dinner'll be ready directly, but just see what I've read in the Northern Bee ... Prince Gromoboy is dead.'

Maria Nikolaevna raised her head.

'Ah! I wish him the joys of Paradise! He used,' she turned to Sanin, 'to fill all my rooms with camellias every February on my birthday, But it wasn't worth spending the winter in Petersburg for that. He must have been over seventy, I should say?' she said to her husband.

'Yes, he was. They describe his funeral in the paper. All the court were present. And here's a poem too, of Prince Kovrizhkin's on the occasion.'

'That's nice!'

'Shall I read them? The prince calls him the good man of wise counsel.'

'No, don't. The good man of wise counsel? He was simply the goodman of Tatiana Yurevna. Come to dinner. Life is for the living. Dimitri Pavlovitch, your arm.'

* * * * *

The dinner was, as on the day before, superb, and the meal was a very lively one. Maria Nikolaevna knew how to tell a story ... a rare gift in a woman, and especially in a Russian one! She did not restrict herself in her expressions; her countrywomen received particularly severe treatment at her hands. Sanin was more than once set laughing by some bold and well-directed word. Above all, Maria Nikolaevna had no patience with hypocrisy, cant, and humbug. She discovered it almost everywhere. She, as it were, plumed herself on and boasted of the humble surroundings in which she had begun life. She told rather queer anecdotes of her relations in the days of her childhood, spoke of herself as quite as much of a clodhopper as Natalya Kirilovna Narishkin. It became apparent to Sanin that she had been through a great deal more in her time than the majority of women of her age.

Polozov ate meditatively, drank attentively, and only occasionally cast first on his wife, then on Sanin, his lightish, dim-looking, but, in reality, very keen eyes.

'What a clever darling you are!' cried Maria Nikolaevna, turning to him; 'how well you carried out all my commissions in Frankfort! I could give you a kiss on your forehead for it, but you're not very keen after kisses.'

'I'm not,' responded Polozov, and he cut a pine-apple with a silver knife.

Maria Nikolaevna looked at him and drummed with her fingers on the table. 'So our bet's on, isn't it?' she said significantly. 'Yes, it's on.'

'All right. You'll lose it.'

Polozov stuck out his chin. 'Well, this time you mustn't be too sanguine, Maria Nikolaevna, maybe you will lose.'

'What is the bet? May I know?' asked Sanin.

'No ... not now,' answered Maria Nikolaevna, and she laughed.

It struck seven. The waiter announced that the carriage was ready. Polozov saw his wife out, and at once waddled back to his easy-chair.

'Mind now! Don't forget the letter to the overseer,' Maria Nikolaevna shouted to him from the hall.

'I'll write, don't worry yourself. I'm a business-like person.'

XXXIX

In the year 1840, the theatre at Wiesbaden was a poor affair even externally, and its company, for affected and pitiful mediocrity, for studious and vulgar commonplaceness, not one hair's-breadth above the level, which might be regarded up to now as the normal one in all German theatres, and which has been displayed in perfection lately by the company in Carlsruhe, under the 'illustrious' direction of Herr Devrient. At the back of the box taken for her 'Serenity Madame von Polozov' (how the waiter devised the means of getting it, God knows, he can hardly have really bribed the stadt-director!) was a little room, with sofas all round it; before she went into the box, Maria Nikolaevna asked Sanin to draw up the screen that shut the box off from the theatre.

'I don't want to be seen,' she said, 'or else they'll be swarming round directly, you know.' She made him sit down beside her with his back to the house so that the box seemed to be empty. The orchestra played the overture from the Marriage of Figaro. The curtain rose, the play began.

It was one of those numerous home-raised products in which well-read but talentless authors, in choice, but dead language, studiously and cautiously enunciated some 'profound' or 'vital and palpitating' idea, portrayed a so-called tragic conflict, and produced dulness ... an Asiatic dulness, like Asiatic cholera. Maria Nikolaevna listened patiently to half an act, but when the first lover, discovering the treachery of his mistress (he was dressed in a cinnamon-coloured coat with 'puffs' and a plush collar, a striped waistcoat with mother-of-pearl buttons, green trousers with straps of varnished leather, and white chamois leather gloves), when this lover pressed both fists to his bosom, and poking his two elbows out at an acute angle, howled like a dog, Maria Nikolaevna could not stand it.

'The humblest French actor in the humblest little provincial town acts better and more naturally than the highest German celebrity,' she cried in indignation; and she moved away and sat down in the little room at the back. 'Come here,' she said to Sanin, patting the sofa beside her. 'Let's talk.'

Sanin obeyed.

Maria Nikolaevna glanced at him. 'Ah, I see you're as soft as silk! Your wife will have an easy time of it with you. That buffoon,' she went on, pointing with her fan towards the howling actor (he was acting the part of a tutor), 'reminded me of my young days; I, too, was in love with a teacher. It was my first ... no, my second passion. The first time I fell in love with a young monk of the Don monastery. I was twelve years old. I only saw him on Sundays. He used to wear a short velvet cassock, smelt of lavender water, and as he made his way through the crowd with the censer, used to say to the ladies in French, "Pardon, excusez" but never lifted his eyes, and he had eyelashes like that!' Maria Nikolaevna marked off with the nail of her middle finger quite half the length of the little finger and showed Sanin. 'My tutor was called--Monsieur Gaston! I must tell you he was an awfully learned and very severe person, a Swiss,--and with such an energetic face! Whiskers black as pitch, a Greek profile, and lips that looked like cast iron! I was afraid of him! He was the only man I have ever been afraid of in my life. He was tutor to my brother, who died ... was drowned. A gipsy woman has foretold a violent death for me too, but that's all moonshine. I don't believe in it. Only fancy Ippolit Sidoritch with a dagger!'

'One may die from something else than a dagger,' observed Sanin.

'All that's moonshine! Are you superstitious? I'm not a bit. What is to be, will be. Monsieur Gaston used to live in our house, in the room over my head. Sometimes I'd wake up at night and hear his footstep--he used to go to bed very late--and my heart would stand still with veneration, or some other feeling. My father could hardly read and write himself, but he gave us an excellent education. Do you know, I learnt Latin!'

'You? learnt Latin?'

'Yes; I did. Monsieur Gaston taught me. I read the Æneid with him. It's a dull thing, but there are fine passages. Do you remember when Dido and Æneas are in the forest?...'

'Yes, yes, I remember,' Sanin answered hurriedly. He had long ago forgotten all his Latin, and had only very faint notions about the Æneid.

Maria Nikolaevna glanced at him, as her way was, a little from one side and looking upwards. 'Don't imagine, though, that I am very learned. Mercy on us! no; I'm not learned, and I've no talents of any sort. I scarcely know how to write ... really; I can't read aloud; nor play the piano, nor draw, nor sew--nothing! That's what I am--there you have me!'

She threw out her hands. 'I tell you all this,' she said, 'first, so as not to hear those fools (she pointed to the stage where at that instant the actor's place was being filled by an actress, also howling, and also with her elbows projecting before her) and secondly, because I'm in your debt; you told me all about yourself yesterday.'

'It was your pleasure to question me,' observed Sanin.

Maria Nikolaevna suddenly turned to him. 'And it's not your pleasure to know just what sort of woman I am? I can't wonder at it, though,' she went on, leaning back again on the sofa cushions. 'A man just going to be married, and for love, and after a duel.... What thoughts could he have for anything else?'

Maria Nikolaevna relapsed into dreamy silence, and began biting the handle of her fan with her big, but even, milkwhite teeth.

And Sanin felt mounting to his head again that intoxication which he had not been able to get rid of for the last two days.

The conversation between him and Maria Nikolaevna was carried on in an undertone, almost in a whisper, and this irritated and disturbed him the more....

When would it all end?

Weak people never put an end to things themselves--they always wait for the end.

Some one sneezed on the stage; this sneeze had been put into the play by the author as the 'comic relief' or 'element'; there was certainly no other comic element in it; and the audience made the most of it; they laughed.

This laugh, too, jarred upon Sanin.

There were moments when he actually did not know whether he was furious or delighted, bored or amused. Oh, if Gemma could have seen him!

'It's really curious,' Maria Nikolaevna began all at once. 'A man informs one and in such a calm voice, "I am going to get married"; but no one calmly says to one, "I'm going to throw myself in the water." And yet what difference is there? It's curious, really.'

Annoyance got the upper hand of Sanin. 'There's a great difference, Maria Nikolaevna! It's not dreadful at all to throw oneself in the water if one can swim; and besides ... as to the strangeness of marriages, if you come to that ...'

He stopped short abruptly and bit his tongue.

Maria Nikolaevna slapped her open hand with her fan.

'Go on, Dimitri Pavlovitch, go on--I know what you were going to say. "If it comes to that, my dear madam, Maria Nikolaevna Polozov," you were going to say, "anything more curious than your marriage it would be impossible to conceive.... I know your husband well, from a child!" That's what you were going to say, you who can swim!'

'Excuse me,' Sanin was beginning....

'Isn't it the truth? Isn't it the truth?' Maria Nikolaevna pronounced insistently.

'Come, look me in the face and tell me I was wrong!'

Sanin did not know what to do with his eyes. 'Well, if you like; it's the truth, if you absolutely insist upon it,' he said at last.

Maria Nikolaevna shook her head. 'Quite so, quite so. Well, and did you ask yourself, you who can swim, what could be the reason of such a strange ... step on the part of a woman, not poor ... and not a fool ... and not ugly? All that does not interest you, perhaps, but no matter. I'll tell you the reason not this minute, but directly the entr'acte is over. I am in continual uneasiness for fear some one should come in....'

Maria Nikolaevna had hardly uttered this last word when the outer door actually was half opened, and into the box was thrust a head--red, oily, perspiring, still young, but toothless; with sleek long hair, a pendent nose, huge ears like a bat's, with gold spectacles on inquisitive dull eyes, and a pince-nez over the spectacles. The head looked round, saw Maria Nikolaevna, gave a nasty grin, nodded.... A scraggy neck craned in after it....

Maria Nikolaevna shook her handkerchief at it. 'I'm not at home! Ich bin nicht zu Hause, Herr P....! Ich bin nicht zu Hause.... Ksh-sk! ksh-sh-sh!'

The head was disconcerted, gave a forced laugh, said with a sort of sob, in imitation of Liszt, at whose feet he had once reverently grovelled, 'Sehr gut, sehr gut!' and vanished.

'What is that object?' inquired Sanin.

'Oh, a Wiesbaden critic. A literary man or a flunkey, as you like. He is in the pay of a local speculator here, and so is bound to praise everything and be ecstatic over every one, though for his part he is soaked through and through with the nastiest venom, to which he does not dare to give vent. I am afraid he's an awful scandalmonger; he'll run at once to tell every one I'm in the theatre. Well, what does it matter?'

The orchestra played through a waltz, the curtain floated up again.... The grimacing and whimpering began again on the stage.

'Well,' began Maria Nikolaevna, sinking again on to the sofa. 'Since you are here and obliged to sit with me, instead of enjoying the society of your betrothed--don't turn away your eyes and get cross--I understand you, and have promised already to let you go to the other end of the earth--but now hear my confession. Do you care to know what I like more than anything?'

'Freedom,' hazarded Sanin.

Maria Nikolaevna laid her hand on his hand.

'Yes, Dimitri Pavlovitch,' she said, and in her voice there was a note of something special, a sort of unmistakable sincerity and gravity, 'freedom, more than all and before all. And don't imagine I am boasting of this--there is nothing praiseworthy in it; only it's so and always will be so with me to the day of my death. I suppose it must have been that I saw a great deal of slavery in my childhood and suffered enough from it. Yes, and Monsieur Gaston, my tutor, opened my eyes too. Now you can, perhaps, understand why I married Ippolit Sidoritch: with him I'm free, perfectly free as air, as the wind.... And I knew that before marriage; I knew that with him I should be a free Cossack!'

Maria Nikolaevna paused and flung her fan aside.

'I will tell you one thing more; I have no distaste for reflection ... it's amusing, and indeed our brains are given us for that; but on the consequences of what I do I never reflect, and if I suffer I don't pity myself--not a little bit; it's not worth it. I have a favourite saying: Cela ne tire pas à conséquence,--I don't know how to say that in Russian. And after all, what does tire à consequence? I shan't be asked to give an account of myself here, you see--in this world; and up there (she pointed upwards with her finger), well, up there--let them manage as best they can. When they come to judge me up there, I shall not be I! Are you listening to me? Aren't you bored?'

Sanin was sitting bent up. He raised his head. 'I'm not at all bored, Maria Nikolaevna, and I am listening to you with curiosity. Only I ... confess ... I wonder why you say all this to me?'

Maria Nikolaevna edged a little away on the sofa.

'You wonder?... Are you slow to guess? Or so modest?'

Sanin lifted his head higher than before.

'I tell you all this,' Maria Nikolaevna continued in an unmoved tone, which did not, however, at all correspond with the expression of her face, 'because I like you very much; yes, don't be surprised, I'm not joking; because since I have met you, it would be painful to me that you had a disagreeable recollection of me ... not disagreeable even, that I shouldn't mind, but untrue. That's why I have made you come here, and am staying alone with you and talking to you so openly.... Yes, yes, openly. I'm not telling a lie. And observe, Dimitri Pavlovitch, I know you're in love with another woman, that you're going to be married to her.... Do justice to my disinterestedness! Though indeed it's a good opportunity for you to say in your turn: Cela ne tire pas à conséquence!'

She laughed, but her laugh suddenly broke off, and she stayed motionless, as though her own words had suddenly struck her, and in her eyes, usually so gay and bold, there was a gleam of something like timidity, even like sadness.

'Snake! ah, she's a snake!' Sanin was thinking meanwhile; 'but what a lovely snake!'

'Give me my opera-glass,' Maria Nikolaevna said suddenly. 'I want to see whether this jeune première really is so ugly. Upon my word, one might fancy the government appointed her in the interests of morality, so that the young men might not lose their heads over her.'

Sanin handed her the opera-glass, and as she took it from him, swiftly, but hardly audibly, she snatched his hand in both of hers.

'Please don't be serious,' she whispered with a smile. 'Do you know what, no one can put fetters on me, but then you see I put no fetters on others. I love freedom, and I don't acknowledge duties--not only for myself. Now move to one side a little, and let us listen to the play.'

Maria Nikolaevna turned her opera-glass upon the stage, and Sanin proceeded to look in the same direction, sitting beside her in the half dark of the box, and involuntarily drinking in the warmth and fragrance of her luxurious body, and as involuntarily turning over and over in his head all she had said during the evening--especially during the last minutes.

XL

The play lasted over an hour longer, but Maria Nikolaevna and Sanin soon gave up looking at the stage. A conversation sprang up between them again, and went on the same lines as before; only this time Sanin was less silent. Inwardly he was angry with himself and with Maria Nikolaevna; he tried to prove to her all the inconsistency of her 'theory,' as though she cared for theories! He began arguing with her, at which she was secretly rejoiced; if a man argues, it means that he is giving in or will give in. He had taken the bait, was giving way, had left off keeping shyly aloof! She retorted, laughed, agreed, mused dreamily, attacked him ... and meanwhile his face and her face were close together, his eyes no longer avoided her eyes.... Those eyes of hers seemed to ramble, seemed to hover over his features, and he smiled in response to them--a smile of civility, but still a smile. It was so much gained for her that he had gone off into abstractions, that he was discoursing upon truth in personal relations, upon duty, the sacredness of love and marriage.... It is well known that these abstract propositions serve admirably as a beginning ... as a starting-point....

People who knew Maria Nikolaevna well used to maintain that when her strong and vigorous personality showed signs of something soft and modest, something almost of maidenly shamefacedness, though one wondered where she could have got it from ... then ... then, things were taking a dangerous turn.

Things had apparently taken such a turn for Sanin.... He would have felt contempt for himself, if he could have succeeded in concentrating his attention for one instant; but he had not time to concentrate his mind nor to despise himself.

She wasted no time. And it all came from his being so very good-looking! One can but exclaim, No man knows what may be his making or his undoing!

The play was over. Maria Nikolaevna asked Sanin to put on her shawl and did not stir, while he wrapped the soft fabric round her really queenly shoulders. Then she took his arm, went out into the corridor, and almost cried out aloud. At the very door of the box Dönhof sprang up like some apparition; while behind his back she got a glimpse of the figure of the Wiesbaden critic. The 'literary man's' oily face was positively radiant with malignancy.

'Is it your wish, madam, that I find you your carriage?' said the young officer addressing Maria Nikolaevna with a quiver of ill-disguised fury in his voice.

'No, thank you,' she answered ... 'my man will find it. Stop!' she added in an imperious whisper, and rapidly withdrew drawing Sanin along with her.

'Go to the devil! Why are you staring at me?' Dönhof roared suddenly at the literary man. He had to vent his feelings upon some one!

'Sehr gut! sehr gut!' muttered the literary man, and shuffled off.

Maria Nikolaevna's footman, waiting for her in the entrance, found her carriage in no time. She quickly took her seat in it; Sanin leapt in after her. The doors were slammed to, and Maria Nikolaevna exploded in a burst of laughter.

'What are you laughing at?' Sanin inquired.

'Oh, excuse me, please ... but it struck me: what if Dönhof were to have another duel with you ... on my account.... wouldn't that be wonderful?'

'Are you very great friends with him?' Sanin asked.

'With him? that boy? He's one of my followers. You needn't trouble yourself about him!'

'Oh, I'm not troubling myself at all.'

Maria Nikolaevna sighed. 'Ah, I know you're not. But listen, do you know what, you're such a darling, you mustn't refuse me one last request. Remember in three days' time I am going to Paris, and you are returning to Frankfort.... Shall we ever meet again?'

'What is this request?'

'You can ride, of course?'

'Yes.'

'Well, then, to-morrow morning I'll take you with me, and we'll go a ride together out of the town. We'll have splendid horses. Then we'll come home, wind up our business, and amen! Don't be surprised, don't tell me it's a caprice, and I'm a madcap--all that's very likely--but simply say, I consent.'

Maria Nikolaevna turned her face towards him. It was dark in the carriage, but her eyes glittered even in the darkness.

'Very well, I consent,' said Sanin with a sigh.

'Ah! You sighed!' Maria Nikolaevna mimicked him. 'That means to say, as you've begun, you must go on to the bitter end. But no, no.... You're charming, you're good, and I'll keep my promise. Here's my hand, without a glove on it, the right one, for business. Take it, and have faith in its pressure. What sort of a woman I am, I don't know; but I'm an honest fellow, and one can do business with me.'

Sanin, without knowing very well what he was doing, lifted the hand to his lips. Maria Nikolaevna softly took it, and was suddenly still, and did not speak again till the carriage stopped.

She began getting out.... What was it? Sanin's fancy? or did he really feel on his cheek a swift burning kiss?

'Till to-morrow!' whispered Maria Nikolaevna on the steps, in the light of the four tapers of a candelabrum, held up on her appearance by the gold-laced door-keeper. She kept her eyes cast down. 'Till to-morrow!'

When he got back to his room, Sanin found on the table a letter from Gemma. He felt a momentary dismay, and at once made haste to rejoice over it to disguise his dismay from himself. It consisted of a few lines. She was delighted at the 'successful opening of negotiations,' advised him to be patient, and added that all at home were well, and were already rejoicing at the prospect of seeing him back again. Sanin felt the letter rather stiff, he took pen and paper, however ... and threw it all aside again. 'Why write? I shall be back myself to-morrow ... it's high time!'

He went to bed immediately, and tried to get to sleep as quickly as possible. If he had stayed up and remained on his legs, he would certainly have begun thinking about Gemma, and he was for some reason ... ashamed to think of her. His conscience was stirring within him. But he consoled himself with the reflection that to-morrow it would all be over for ever, and he would take leave for good of this feather-brained lady, and would forget all this rotten idiocy!...

Weak people in their mental colloquies, eagerly make use of strong expressions.

Et puis ... cela ne tire pas à consequence!

XLI

Such were Sanin's thoughts, as he went to bed; but what he thought next morning when Maria Nikolaevna knocked impatiently at his door with the coral handle of her riding-whip, when he saw her in the doorway, with the train of a dark-blue riding habit over her arm, with a man's small hat on her thickly coiled curls, with a veil thrown back over her shoulder, with a smile of invitation on her lips, in her eyes, over all her face--what he thought then--history does not record.

'Well? are you ready?' rang out a joyous voice.

Sanin buttoned his coat, and took his hat in silence. Maria Nikolaevna flung him a bright look, nodded to him, and ran swiftly down the staircase. And he ran after her.

The horses were already waiting in the street at the steps. There were three of them, a golden chestnut thorough-bred mare, with a thin-lipped mouth, that showed the teeth, with black prominent eyes, and legs like a stag's, rather thin but beautifully shaped, and full of fire and spirit, for Maria Nikolaevna; a big, powerful, rather thick-set horse, raven black all over, for Sanin; the third horse was destined for the groom. Maria Nikolaevna leaped adroitly on to her mare, who stamped and wheeled round, lifting her tail, and sinking on to her haunches. But Maria Nikolaevna, who was a first-rate horse-woman, reined her in; they had to take leave of Polozov, who in his inevitable fez and in an open dressing-gown, came out on to the balcony, and from there waved a batiste handkerchief, without the faintest smile, rather a frown, in fact, on his face. Sanin too mounted his horse; Maria Nikolaevna saluted Polozov with her whip, then gave her mare a lash with it on her arched and flat neck. The mare reared on her hind legs, made a dash forward, moving with a smart and shortened step, quivering in every sinew, biting the air and snorting abruptly. Sanin rode behind, and looked at Maria Nikolaevna; her slender supple figure, moulded by close-fitting but easy stays, swayed to and fro with self-confident grace and skill. She turned her head and beckoned him with her eyes alone. He came alongside of her.

'See now, how delightful it is,' she said. 'I tell you at the last, before parting, you are charming, and you shan't regret it.'

As she uttered those last words, she nodded her head several times as if to confirm them and make him feel their full weight.

She seemed so happy that Sanin was simply astonished; her face even wore at times that sedate expression which children sometimes have when they are very ... very much pleased.

They rode at a walking pace for the short distance to the city walls, but then started off at a vigorous gallop along the high road. It was magnificent, real summer weather; the wind blew in their faces, and sang and whistled sweetly in their ears. They felt very happy; the sense of youth, health and life, of free eager onward motion, gained possession of both; it grew stronger every instant.

Maria Nikolaevna reined in her mare, and again went at a walking pace; Sanin followed her example.

'This,' she began with a deep blissful sigh, 'this now is the only thing worth living for. When you succeed in doing what you want to, what seemed impossible--come, enjoy it, heart and soul, to the last drop!' She passed her hand across her throat. 'And how good and kind one feels oneself then! I now, at this moment ... how good I feel! I feel as if I could embrace the whole world! No, not the whole world.... That man now I couldn't.' She pointed with her whip at a poorly dressed old man who was stealing along on one side. 'But I am ready to make him happy. Here, take this,' she shouted loudly in German, and she flung a net purse at his feet. The heavy little bag (leather purses were not thought of at that time) fell with a ring on to the road. The old man was astounded, stood still, while Maria Nikolaevna chuckled, and put her mare into a gallop.

'Do you enjoy riding so much?' Sanin asked, as he overtook her.

Maria Nikolaevna reined her mare in once more: only in this way could she bring her to a stop.

'I only wanted to get away from thanks. If any one thanks me, he spoils my pleasure. You see I didn't do that for his sake, but for my own. How dare he thank me? I didn't hear what you asked me.'

'I asked ... I wanted to know what makes you so happy to-day.'

'Do you know what,' said Maria Nikolaevna; either she had again not heard Sanin's question, or she did not consider it necessary to answer it. 'I'm awfully sick of that groom, who sticks up there behind us, and most likely does nothing but wonder when we gentlefolks are going home again. How shall we get rid of him?' She hastily pulled a little pocket-book out of her pocket. 'Send him back to the town with a note? No ... that won't do. Ah! I have it! What's that in front of us? Isn't it an inn?'

Sanin looked in the direction she pointed. 'Yes, I believe it is an inn.'

'Well, that's first-rate. I'll tell him to stop at that inn and drink beer till we come back.'

'But what will he think?'

'What does it matter to us? Besides, he won't think at all; he'll drink beer--that's all. Come, Sanin (it was the first time she had used his surname alone), on, gallop!'

When they reached the inn, Maria Nikolaevna called the groom up and told him what she wished of him. The groom, a man of English extraction and English temperament, raised his hand to the beak of his cap without a word, jumped off his horse, and took him by the bridle.

'Well, now we are free as the birds of the air!' cried Maria Nikolaevna. 'Where shall we go. North, south, east, or west? Look--I'm like the Hungarian king at his coronation (she pointed her whip in each direction in turn). All is ours! No, do you know what: see, those glorious mountains--and that forest! Let's go there, to the mountains, to the mountains!'

'In die Berge wo die Freiheit thront!'

She turned off the high-road and galloped along a narrow untrodden track, which certainly seemed to lead straight to the hills. Sanin galloped after her.

XLII

This track soon changed into a tiny footpath, and at last disappeared altogether, and was crossed by a stream. Sanin counselled turning back, but Maria Nikolaevna said, 'No! I want to get to the mountains! Let's go straight, as the birds fly,' and she made her mare leap the stream. Sanin leaped it too. Beyond the stream began a wide meadow, at first dry, then wet, and at last quite boggy; the water oozed up everywhere, and stood in pools in some places. Maria Nikolaevna rode her mare straight through these pools on purpose, laughed, and said, 'Let's be naughty children.'

'Do you know,' she asked Sanin, 'what is meant by pool-hunting?'

'Yes,' answered Sanin.

'I had an uncle a huntsman,' she went on.

'I used to go out hunting with him--in the spring. It was delicious! Here we are now, on the pools with you. Only, I see, you're a Russian, and yet mean to marry an Italian. Well, that's your sorrow. What's that? A stream again! Gee up!'

The horse took the leap, but Maria Nikolaevna's hat fell off her head, and her curls tumbled loose over her shoulders. Sanin was just going to get off his horse to pick up the hat, but she shouted to him, 'Don't touch it, I'll get it myself,' bent low down from the saddle, hooked the handle of her whip into the veil, and actually did get the hat. She put it on her head, but did not fasten up her hair, and again darted off, positively holloaing. Sanin dashed along beside her, by her side leaped trenches, fences, brooks, fell in and scrambled out, flew down hill, flew up hill, and kept watching her face. What a face it was! It was all, as it were, wide open: wide-open eyes, eager, bright, and wild; lips, nostrils, open too, and breathing eagerly; she looked straight before her, and it seemed as though that soul longed to master everything it saw, the earth, the sky, the sun, the air itself; and would complain of one thing only--that dangers were so few, and all she could overcome. 'Sanin!' she cried, 'why, this is like Bürger's Lenore! Only you're not dead--eh? Not dead ... I am alive!' She let her force and daring have full fling. It seemed not an Amazon on a galloping horse, but a young female centaur at full speed, half-beast and half-god, and the sober, well-bred country seemed astounded, as it was trampled underfoot in her wild riot!

Maria Nikolaevna at last drew up her foaming and bespattered mare; she was staggering under her, and Sanin's powerful but heavy horse was gasping for breath.

'Well, do you like it?' Maria Nikolaevna asked in a sort of exquisite whisper.

'I like it!' Sanin echoed back ecstatically. And his blood was on fire.

'This isn't all, wait a bit.' She held out her hand. Her glove was torn across.

'I told you I would lead you to the forest, to the mountains.... Here they are, the mountains!' The mountains, covered with tall forest, rose about two hundred feet from the place they had reached in their wild ride. 'Look, here is the road; let us turn into it--and forwards. Only at a walk. We must let our horses get their breath.'

They rode on. With one vigorous sweep of her arm Maria Nikolaevna flung back her hair. Then she looked at her gloves and took them off. 'My hands will smell of leather,' she said, 'you won't mind that, eh?' ... Maria Nikolaevna smiled, and Sanin smiled too. Their mad gallop together seemed to have finally brought them together and made them friends.

'How old are you?' she asked suddenly.

'Twenty-two.'

'Really? I'm twenty-two too. A nice age. Add both together and you're still far off old age. It's hot, though. Am I very red, eh?'

'Like a poppy!'

Maria Nikolaevna rubbed her face with her handkerchief. 'We've only to get to the forest and there it will be cool. Such an old forest is like an old friend. Have you any friends?'

Sanin thought a little. 'Yes ... only few. No real ones.'

'I have; real ones--but not old ones. This is a friend too--a horse. How carefully it carries one! Ah, but it's splendid here! Is it possible I am going to Paris the day after to-morrow?'

'Yes ... is it possible?' Sanin chimed in.

'And you to Frankfort?'

'I am certainly going to Frankfort.'

'Well, what of it? Good luck go with you! Anyway, to-day's ours ... ours ... ours!'

* * * * *

The horses reached the forest's edge and pushed on into the forest. The broad soft shade of the forest wrapt them round on all sides.

'Oh, but this is paradise!' cried Maria Nikolaevna. 'Further, deeper into the shade, Sanin!'

The horses moved slowly on, 'deeper into the shade,' slightly swaying and snorting. The path, by which they had come in, suddenly turned off and plunged into a rather narrow gorge. The smell of heather and bracken, of the resin of the pines, and the decaying leaves of last year, seemed to hang, close and drowsy, about it. Through the clefts of the big brown rocks came strong currents of fresh air. On both sides of the path rose round hillocks covered with green moss.

'Stop!' cried Maria Nikolaevna, 'I want to sit down and rest on this velvet. Help me to get off.'

Sanin leaped off his horse and ran up to her. She leaned on both his shoulders, sprang instantly to the ground, and seated herself on one of the mossy mounds. He stood before her, holding both the horses' bridles in his hand.

She lifted her eyes to him.... 'Sanin, are you able to forget?'

Sanin recollected what had happened yesterday ... in the carriage. 'What is that--a question ... or a reproach?'

'I have never in my life reproached any one for anything. Do you believe in magic?'

'What?'

'In magic?--you know what is sung of in our ballads--our Russian peasant ballads?'

'Ah! That's what you're speaking of,' Sanin said slowly.

'Yes, that's it. I believe in it ... and you will believe in it.'

'Magic is sorcery ...' Sanin repeated, 'Anything in the world is possible. I used not to believe in it--but I do now. I don't know myself.'

Maria Nikolaevna thought a moment and looked about her. 'I fancy this place seems familiar to me. Look, Sanin, behind that bushy oak--is there a red wooden cross, or not?'

Sanin moved a few steps to one side. 'Yes, there is.' Maria Nikolaevna smiled. 'Ah, that's good! I know where we are. We haven't got lost as yet. What's that tapping? A wood-cutter?'

Sanin looked into the thicket. 'Yes ... there's a man there chopping up dry branches.'

'I must put my hair to rights,' said Maria Nikolaevna. 'Else he'll see me and be shocked.' She took off her hat and began plaiting up her long hair, silently and seriously. Sanin stood facing her ... All the lines of her graceful limbs could be clearly seen through the dark folds of her habit, dotted here and there with tufts of moss.

One of the horses suddenly shook itself behind Sanin's back; he himself started and trembled from head to foot. Everything was in confusion within him, his nerves were strung up like harpstrings. He might well say he did not know himself.... He really was bewitched. His whole being was filled full of one thing ... one idea, one desire. Maria Nikolaevna turned a keen look upon him.

'Come, now everything's as it should be,' she observed, putting on her hat. 'Won't you sit down? Here! No, wait a minute ... don't sit down! What's that?'

Over the tree-tops, over the air of the forest, rolled a dull rumbling.

'Can it be thunder?'

'I think it really is thunder,' answered Sanin.

'Oh, this is a treat, a real treat! That was the only thing wanting!' The dull rumble was heard a second time, rose, and fell in a crash. 'Bravo! Bis! Do you remember I spoke of the Æneid yesterday? They too were overtaken by a storm in the forest, you know. We must be off, though.' She rose swiftly to her feet. 'Bring me my horse.... Give me your hand. There, so. I'm not heavy.'

She hopped like a bird into the saddle. Sanin too mounted his horse.

'Are you going home?' he asked in an unsteady voice.

'Home indeed!' she answered deliberately and picked up the reins. 'Follow me,' she commanded almost roughly. She came out on to the road and passing the red cross, rode down into a hollow, clambered up again to a cross road, turned to the right and again up the mountainside.... She obviously knew where the path led, and the path led farther and farther into the heart of the forest. She said nothing and did not look round; she moved imperiously in front and humbly and submissively he followed without a spark of will in his sinking heart. Rain began to fall in spots. She quickened her horse's pace, and he did not linger behind her. At last through the dark green of the young firs under an overhanging grey rock, a tumbledown little hut peeped out at him, with a low door in its wattle wall.... Maria Nikolaevna made her mare push through the fir bushes, leaped off her, and appearing suddenly at the entrance to the hut, turned to Sanin, and whispered 'Æneas.'

* * * * *

Four hours later, Maria Nikolaevna and Sanin, accompanied by the groom, who was nodding in the saddle, returned to Wiesbaden, to the hotel. Polozov met his wife with the letter to the overseer in his hand. After staring rather intently at her, he showed signs of some displeasure on his face, and even muttered, 'You don't mean to say you've won your bet?'

Maria Nikolaevna simply shrugged her shoulders.

* * * * *

The same day, two hours later, Sanin was standing in his own room before her, like one distraught, ruined....

'Where are you going, dear?' she asked him. 'To Paris, or to Frankfort?'

'I am going where you will be, and will be with you till you drive me away,' he answered with despair and pressed close to him the hands of his sovereign. She freed her hands, laid them on his head, and clutched at his hair with her fingers. She slowly turned over and twisted the unresisting hair, drew herself up, her lips curled with triumph, while her eyes, wide and clear, almost white, expressed nothing but the ruthlessness and glutted joy of conquest. The hawk, as it clutches a captured bird, has eyes like that.

XLIII

This was what Dimitri Sanin remembered when in the stillness of his room turning over his old papers he found among them a garnet cross. The events we have described rose clearly and consecutively before his mental vision.... But when he reached the moment when he addressed that humiliating prayer to Madame Polozov, when he grovelled at her feet, when his slavery began, he averted his gaze from the images he had evoked, he tried to recall no more. And not that his memory failed him, oh no! he knew only too well what followed upon that moment, but he was stifled by shame, even now, so many years after; he dreaded that feeling of self-contempt, which he knew for certain would overwhelm him, and like a torrent, flood all other feelings if he did not bid his memory be still. But try as he would to turn away from these memories, he could not stifle them entirely. He remembered the scoundrelly, tearful, lying, pitiful letter he had sent to Gemma, that never received an answer.... See her again, go back to her, after such falsehood, such treachery, no! no! he could not, so much conscience and honesty was left in him. Moreover, he had lost every trace of confidence in himself, every atom of self-respect; he dared not rely on himself for anything. Sanin recollected too how he had later on--oh, ignominy!--sent the Polozovs' footman to Frankfort for his things, what cowardly terror he had felt, how he had had one thought only, to get away as soon as might be to Paris--to Paris; how in obedience to Maria Nikolaevna, he had humoured and tried to please Ippolit Sidoritch and been amiable to Dönhof, on whose finger he noticed just such an iron ring as Maria Nikolaevna had given him!!! Then followed memories still worse, more ignominious ... the waiter hands him a visiting card, and on it is the name, 'Pantaleone Cippatola, court singer to His Highness the Duke of Modena!' He hides from the old man, but cannot escape meeting him in the corridor, and a face of exasperation rises before him under an upstanding topknot of grey hair; the old eyes blaze like red-hot coals, and he hears menacing cries and curses: 'Maledizione!' hears even the terrible words: 'Codardo! Infame traditore!' Sanin closes his eyes, shakes his head, turns away again and again, but still he sees himself sitting in a travelling carriage on the narrow front seat ... In the comfortable places facing the horses sit Maria Nikolaevna and Ippolit Sidoritch, the four horses trotting all together fly along the paved roads of Wiesbaden to Paris! to Paris! Ippolit Sidoritch is eating a pear which Sanin has peeled for him, while Maria Nikolaevna watches him and smiles at him, her bondslave, that smile he knows already, the smile of the proprietor, the slave-owner.... But, good God, out there at the corner of the street not far from the city walls, wasn't it Pantaleone again, and who with him? Can it be Emilio? Yes, it was he, the enthusiastic devoted boy! Not long since his young face had been full of reverence before his hero, his ideal, but now his pale handsome face, so handsome that Maria Nikolaevna noticed him and poked her head out of the carriage window, that noble face is glowing with anger and contempt; his eyes, so like her eyes! are fastened upon Sanin, and the tightly compressed lips part to revile him....

And Pantaleone stretches out his hand and points Sanin out to Tartaglia standing near, and Tartaglia barks at Sanin, and the very bark of the faithful dog sounds like an unbearable reproach.... Hideous!

And then, the life in Paris, and all the humiliations, all the loathsome tortures of the slave, who dare not be jealous or complain, and who is cast aside at last, like a worn-out garment....

Then the going home to his own country, the poisoned, the devastated life, the petty interests and petty cares, bitter and fruitless regret, and as bitter and fruitless apathy, a punishment not apparent, but of every minute, continuous, like some trivial but incurable disease, the payment farthing by farthing of the debt, which can never be settled....

The cup was full enough.

* * * * *

How had the garnet cross given Sanin by Gemma existed till now, why had he not sent it back, how had it happened that he had never come across it till that day? A long, long while he sat deep in thought, and taught as he was by the experience of so many years, he still could not comprehend how he could have deserted Gemma, so tenderly and passionately loved, for a woman he did not love at all.... Next day he surprised all his friends and acquaintances by announcing that he was going abroad.

The surprise was general in society. Sanin was leaving Petersburg, in the middle of the winter, after having only just taken and furnished a capital flat, and having even secured seats for all the performances of the Italian Opera, in which Madame Patti ... Patti, herself, herself, was to take part! His friends and acquaintances wondered; but it is not human nature as a rule to be interested long in other people's affairs, and when Sanin set off for abroad, none came to the railway station to see him off but a French tailor, and he only in the hope of securing an unpaid account 'pour un saute-en-barque en velours noir tout à fait chic.'

XLIV

Sanin told his friends he was going abroad, but he did not say where exactly: the reader will readily conjecture that he made straight for Frankfort. Thanks to the general extension of railways, on the fourth day after leaving Petersburg he was there. He had not visited the place since 1840. The hotel, the White Swan, was standing in its old place and still flourishing, though no longer regarded as first class. The Zeile, the principal street of Frankfort was little changed, but there was not only no trace of Signora Roselli's house, the very street in which it stood had disappeared. Sanin wandered like a man in a dream about the places once so familiar, and recognised nothing; the old buildings had vanished; they were replaced by new streets of huge continuous houses and fine villas; even the public garden, where that last interview with Gemma had taken place, had so grown up and altered that Sanin wondered if it really were the same garden. What was he to do? How and where could he get information? Thirty years, no little thing! had passed since those days. No one to whom he applied had even heard of the name Roselli; the hotel-keeper advised him to have recourse to the public library, there, he told him, he would find all the old newspapers, but what good he would get from that, the hotel-keeper owned he didn't see. Sanin in despair made inquiries about Herr Klüber. That name the hotel-keeper knew well, but there too no success awaited him. The elegant shop-manager, after making much noise in the world and rising to the position of a capitalist, had speculated, was made bankrupt, and died in prison.... This piece of news did not, however, occasion Sanin the slightest regret. He was beginning to feel that his journey had been rather precipitate.... But, behold, one day, as he was turning over a Frankfort directory, he came on the name: Von Dönhof, retired major. He promptly took a carriage and drove to the address, though why was this Von Dönhof certain to be that Dönhof, and why even was the right Dönhof likely to be able to tell him any news of the Roselli family? No matter, a drowning man catches at straws.

Sanin found the retired major von Dönhof at home, and in the grey-haired gentleman who received him he recognised at once his adversary of bygone days. Dönhof knew him too, and was positively delighted to see him; he recalled to him his young days, the escapades of his youth. Sanin heard from him that the Roselli family had long, long ago emigrated to America, to New York; that Gemma had married a merchant; that he, Dönhof, had an acquaintance also a merchant, who would probably know her husband's address, as he did a great deal of business with America. Sanin begged Dönhof to consult this friend, and, to his delight, Dönhof brought him the address of Gemma's husband, Mr. Jeremy Slocum, New York, Broadway, No. 501. Only this address dated from the year 1863.

'Let us hope,' cried Dönhof, 'that our Frankfort belle is still alive and has not left New York! By the way,' he added, dropping his voice, 'what about that Russian lady, who was staying, do you remember, about that time at Wiesbaden--Madame von Bo ... von Bolozov, is she still living?'

'No,' answered Sanin, 'she died long ago.' Dönhof looked up, but observing that Sanin had turned away and was frowning, he did not say another word, but took his leave.

* * * * *

That same day Sanin sent a letter to Madame Gemma Slocum, at New York. In the letter he told her he was writing to her from Frankfort, where he had come solely with the object of finding traces of her, that he was very well aware that he was absolutely without a right to expect that she would answer his appeal; that he had not deserved her forgiveness, and could only hope that among happy surroundings she had long ago forgotten his existence. He added that he had made up his mind to recall himself to her memory in consequence of a chance circumstance which had too vividly brought back to him the images of the past; he described his life, solitary, childless, joyless; he implored her to understand the grounds that had induced him to address her, not to let him carry to the grave the bitter sense of his own wrongdoing, expiated long since by suffering, but never forgiven, and to make him happy with even the briefest news of her life in the new world to which she had gone away. 'In writing one word to me,' so Sanin ended his letter, 'you will be doing a good action worthy of your noble soul, and I shall thank you to my last breath. I am stopping here at the White Swan (he underlined those words) and shall wait, wait till spring, for your answer.'

He despatched this letter, and proceeded to wait. For six whole weeks he lived in the hotel, scarcely leaving his room, and resolutely seeing no one. No one could write to him from Russia nor from anywhere; and that just suited his mood; if a letter came addressed to him he would know at once that it was the one he was waiting for. He read from morning till evening, and not journals, but serious books--historical works. These prolonged studies, this stillness, this hidden life, like a snail in its shell, suited his spiritual condition to perfection; and for this, if nothing more, thanks to Gemma! But was she alive? Would she answer?

At last a letter came, with an American postmark, from New York, addressed to him. The handwriting of the address on the envelope was English.... He did not recognise it, and there was a pang at his heart. He could not at once bring himself to break open the envelope. He glanced at the signature--Gemma! The tears positively gushed from his eyes: the mere fact that she signed her name, without a surname, was a pledge to him of reconciliation, of forgiveness! He unfolded the thin sheet of blue notepaper: a photograph slipped out. He made haste to pick it up--and was struck dumb with amazement: Gemma, Gemma living, young as he had known her thirty years ago! The same eyes, the same lips, the same form of the whole face! On the back of the photograph was written, 'My daughter Mariana.' The whole letter was very kind and simple. Gemma thanked Sanin for not having hesitated to write to her, for having confidence in her; she did not conceal from him that she had passed some painful moments after his disappearance, but she added at once that for all that she considered--and had always considered--her meeting him as a happy thing, seeing that it was that meeting which had prevented her from becoming the wife of Mr. Klüber, and in that way, though indirectly, had led to her marriage with her husband, with whom she had now lived twenty-eight years, in perfect happiness, comfort, and prosperity; their house was known to every one in New York. Gemma informed Sanin that she was the mother of five children, four sons and one daughter, a girl of eighteen, engaged to be married, and her photograph she enclosed as she was generally considered very like her mother. The sorrowful news Gemma kept for the end of the letter. Frau Lenore had died in New York, where she had followed her daughter and son-in-law, but she had lived long enough to rejoice in her children's happiness and to nurse her grandchildren. Pantaleone, too, had meant to come out to America, but he had died on the very eve of leaving Frankfort. 'Emilio, our beloved, incomparable Emilio, died a glorious death for the freedom of his country in Sicily, where he was one of the "Thousand" under the leadership of the great Garibaldi; we all bitterly lamented the loss of our priceless brother, but, even in the midst of our tears, we were proud of him--and shall always be proud of him--and hold his memory sacred! His lofty, disinterested soul was worthy of a martyr's crown!' Then Gemma expressed her regret that Sanin's life had apparently been so unsuccessful, wished him before everything peace and a tranquil spirit, and said that she would be very glad to see him again, though she realised how unlikely such a meeting was....

We will not attempt to describe the feelings Sanin experienced as he read this letter. For such feelings there is no satisfactory expression; they are too deep and too strong and too vague for any word. Only music could reproduce them.

Sanin answered at once; and as a wedding gift to the young girl, sent to 'Mariana Slocum, from an unknown friend,' a garnet cross, set in a magnificent pearl necklace. This present, costly as it was, did not ruin him; during the thirty years that had elapsed since his first visit to Frankfort, he had succeeded in accumulating a considerable fortune. Early in May he went back to Petersburg, but hardly for long. It is rumoured that he is selling all his lands and preparing to go to America.

FIRST LOVE

The party had long ago broken up. The clock struck half-past twelve. There was left in the room only the master of the house and Sergei Nikolaevitch and Vladimir Petrovitch.

The master of the house rang and ordered the remains of the supper to be cleared away. 'And so it's settled,' he observed, sitting back farther in his easy-chair and lighting a cigar; 'each of us is to tell the story of his first love. It's your turn, Sergei Nikolaevitch.'

Sergei Nikolaevitch, a round little man with a plump, light-complexioned face, gazed first at the master of the house, then raised his eyes to the ceiling. 'I had no first love,' he said at last; 'I began with the second.'

'How was that?'

'It's very simple. I was eighteen when I had my first flirtation with a charming young lady, but I courted her just as though it were nothing new to me; just as I courted others later on. To speak accurately, the first and last time I was in love was with my nurse when I was six years old; but that's in the remote past. The details of our relations have slipped out of my memory, and even if I remembered them, whom could they interest?'

'Then how's it to be?' began the master of the house. 'There was nothing much of interest about my first love either; I never fell in love with any one till I met Anna Nikolaevna, now my wife,--and everything went as smoothly as possible with us; our parents arranged the match, we were very soon in love with each other, and got married without loss of time. My story can be told in a couple of words. I must confess, gentlemen, in bringing up the subject of first love, I reckoned upon you, I won't say old, but no longer young, bachelors. Can't you enliven us with something, Vladimir Petrovitch?'

'My first love, certainly, was not quite an ordinary one,' responded, with some reluctance, Vladimir Petrovitch, a man of forty, with black hair turning grey.

'Ah!' said the master of the house and Sergei Nikolaevitch with one voice: 'So much the better.... Tell us about it.'

'If you wish it ... or no; I won't tell the story; I'm no hand at telling a story; I make it dry and brief, or spun out and affected. If you'll allow me, I'll write out all I remember and read it you.'

His friends at first would not agree, but Vladimir Petrovitch insisted on his own way. A fortnight later they were together again, and Vladimir Petrovitch kept his word.

His manuscript contained the following story:--

I

I was sixteen then. It happened in the summer of 1833.

I lived in Moscow with my parents. They had taken a country house for the summer near the Kalouga gate, facing the Neskutchny gardens. I was preparing for the university, but did not work much and was in no hurry.

No one interfered with my freedom. I did what I liked, especially after parting with my last tutor, a Frenchman who had never been able to get used to the idea that he had fallen 'like a bomb' (comme une bombe) into Russia, and would lie sluggishly in bed with an expression of exasperation on his face for days together. My father treated me with careless kindness; my mother scarcely noticed me, though she had no children except me; other cares completely absorbed her. My father, a man still young and very handsome, had married her from mercenary considerations; she was ten years older than he. My mother led a melancholy life; she was for ever agitated, jealous and angry, but not in my father's presence; she was very much afraid of him, and he was severe, cold, and distant in his behaviour.... I have never seen a man more elaborately serene, self-confident, and commanding.

I shall never forget the first weeks I spent at the country house. The weather was magnificent; we left town on the 9th of May, on St. Nicholas's day. I used to walk about in our garden, in the Neskutchny gardens, and beyond the town gates; I would take some book with me--Keidanov's Course, for instance--but I rarely looked into it, and more often than anything declaimed verses aloud; I knew a great deal of poetry by heart; my blood was in a ferment and my heart ached--so sweetly and absurdly; I was all hope and anticipation, was a little frightened of something, and full of wonder at everything, and was on the tiptoe of expectation; my imagination played continually, fluttering rapidly about the same fancies, like martins about a bell-tower at dawn; I dreamed, was sad, even wept; but through the tears and through the sadness, inspired by a musical verse, or the beauty of evening, shot up like grass in spring the delicious sense of youth and effervescent life.

I had a horse to ride; I used to saddle it myself and set off alone for long rides, break into a rapid gallop and fancy myself a knight at a tournament. How gaily the wind whistled in my ears! or turning my face towards the sky, I would absorb its shining radiance and blue into my soul, that opened wide to welcome it.

I remember that at that time the image of woman, the vision of love, scarcely ever arose in definite shape in my brain; but in all I thought, in all I felt, lay hidden a half-conscious, shamefaced presentiment of something new, unutterably sweet, feminine....

This presentiment, this expectation, permeated my whole being; I breathed in it, it coursed through my veins with every drop of blood ... it was destined to be soon fulfilled.

The place, where we settled for the summer, consisted of a wooden manor-house with columns and two small lodges; in the lodge on the left there was a tiny factory for the manufacture of cheap wall-papers.... I had more than once strolled that way to look at about a dozen thin and dishevelled boys with greasy smocks and worn faces, who were perpetually jumping on to wooden levers, that pressed down the square blocks of the press, and so by the weight of their feeble bodies struck off the variegated patterns of the wall-papers. The lodge on the right stood empty, and was to let. One day--three weeks after the 9th of May--the blinds in the windows of this lodge were drawn up, women's faces appeared at them--some family had installed themselves in it. I remember the same day at dinner, my mother inquired of the butler who were our new neighbours, and hearing the name of the Princess Zasyekin, first observed with some respect, 'Ah! a princess!' ... and then added, 'A poor one, I suppose?'

'They arrived in three hired flies,' the butler remarked deferentially, as he handed a dish: 'they don't keep their own carriage, and the furniture's of the poorest.'

'Ah,' replied my mother, 'so much the better.'

My father gave her a chilly glance; she was silent.

Certainly the Princess Zasyekin could not be a rich woman; the lodge she had taken was so dilapidated and small and low-pitched that people, even moderately well-off in the world, would hardly have consented to occupy it. At the time, however, all this went in at one ear and out at the other. The princely title had very little effect on me; I had just been reading Schiller's Robbers.

II

I was in the habit of wandering about our garden every evening on the look-out for rooks. I had long cherished a hatred for those wary, sly, and rapacious birds. On the day of which I have been speaking, I went as usual into the garden, and after patrolling all the walks without success (the rooks knew me, and merely cawed spasmodically at a distance), I chanced to go close to the low fence which separated our domain from the narrow strip of garden stretching beyond the lodge to the right, and belonging to it. I was walking along, my eyes on the ground. Suddenly I heard a voice; I looked across the fence, and was thunder-struck.... I was confronted with a curious spectacle.

A few paces from me on the grass between the green raspberry bushes stood a tall slender girl in a striped pink dress, with a white kerchief on her head; four young men were close round her, and she was slapping them by turns on the forehead with those small grey flowers, the name of which I don't know, though they are well known to children; the flowers form little bags, and burst open with a pop when you strike them against anything hard. The young men presented their foreheads so eagerly, and in the gestures of the girl (I saw her in profile), there was something so fascinating, imperious, caressing, mocking, and charming, that I almost cried out with admiration and delight, and would, I thought, have given everything in the world on the spot only to have had those exquisite fingers strike me on the forehead. My gun slipped on to the grass, I forgot everything, I devoured with my eyes the graceful shape and neck and lovely arms and the slightly disordered fair hair under the white kerchief, and the half-closed clever eye, and the eyelashes and the soft cheek beneath them....

'Young man, hey, young man,' said a voice suddenly near me: 'is it quite permissible to stare so at unknown young ladies?'

I started, I was struck dumb.... Near me, the other side of the fence, stood a man with close-cropped black hair, looking ironically at me. At the same instant the girl too turned towards me.... I caught sight of big grey eyes in a bright mobile face, and the whole face suddenly quivered and laughed, there was a flash of white teeth, a droll lifting of the eyebrows.... I crimsoned, picked up my gun from the ground, and pursued by a musical but not ill-natured laugh, fled to my own room, flung myself on the bed, and hid my face in my hands. My heart was fairly leaping; I was greatly ashamed and overjoyed; I felt an excitement I had never known before.

After a rest, I brushed my hair, washed, and went downstairs to tea. The image of the young girl floated before me, my heart was no longer leaping, but was full of a sort of sweet oppression.

'What's the matter?' my father asked me all at once: 'have you killed a rook?'

I was on the point of telling him all about it, but I checked myself, and merely smiled to myself. As I was going to bed, I rotated--I don't know why--three times on one leg, pomaded my hair, got into bed, and slept like a top all night. Before morning I woke up for an instant, raised my head, looked round me in ecstasy, and fell asleep again.

III

'How can I make their acquaintance?' was my first thought when I waked in the morning. I went out in the garden before morning tea, but I did not go too near the fence, and saw no one. After drinking tea, I walked several times up and down the street before the house, and looked into the windows from a distance.... I fancied her face at a curtain, and I hurried away in alarm.

'I must make her acquaintance, though,' I thought, pacing distractedly about the sandy plain that stretches before Neskutchny park ... 'but how, that is the question.' I recalled the minutest details of our meeting yesterday; I had for some reason or other a particularly vivid recollection of how she had laughed at me.... But while I racked my brains, and made various plans, fate had already provided for me.

In my absence my mother had received from her new neighbour a letter on grey paper, sealed with brown wax, such as is only used in notices from the post-office or on the corks of bottles of cheap wine. In this letter, which was written in illiterate language and in a slovenly hand, the princess begged my mother to use her powerful influence in her behalf; my mother, in the words of the princess, was very intimate with persons of high position, upon whom her fortunes and her children's fortunes depended, as she had some very important business in hand. 'I address myself to you,' she wrote, 'as one gentlewoman to another gentlewoman, and for that reason am glad to avail myself of the opportunity.' Concluding, she begged my mother's permission to call upon her. I found my mother in an unpleasant state of indecision; my father was not at home, and she had no one of whom to ask advice. Not to answer a gentlewoman, and a princess into the bargain, was impossible. But my mother was in a difficulty as to how to answer her. To write a note in French struck her as unsuitable, and Russian spelling was not a strong point with my mother herself, and she was aware of it, and did not care to expose herself. She was overjoyed when I made my appearance, and at once told me to go round to the princess's, and to explain to her by word of mouth that my mother would always be glad to do her excellency any service within her powers, and begged her to come to see her at one o'clock. This unexpectedly rapid fulfilment of my secret desires both delighted and appalled me. I made no sign, however, of the perturbation which came over me, and as a preliminary step went to my own room to put on a new necktie and tail coat; at home I still wore short jackets and lay-down collars, much as I abominated them.

IV

In the narrow and untidy passage of the lodge, which I entered with an involuntary tremor in all my limbs, I was met by an old grey-headed servant with a dark copper-coloured face, surly little pig's eyes, and such deep furrows on his forehead and temples as I had never beheld in my life. He was carrying a plate containing the spine of a herring that had been gnawed at; and shutting the door that led into the room with his foot, he jerked out, 'What do you want?'

'Is the Princess Zasyekin at home?' I inquired.

'Vonifaty!' a jarring female voice screamed from within.

The man without a word turned his back on me, exhibiting as he did so the extremely threadbare hindpart of his livery with a solitary reddish heraldic button on it; he put the plate down on the floor, and went away.

'Did you go to the police station?' the same female voice called again. The man muttered something in reply. 'Eh.... Has some one come?' I heard again.... 'The young gentleman from next door. Ask him in, then.'

'Will you step into the drawing-room?' said the servant, making his appearance once more, and picking up the plate from the floor. I mastered my emotions, and went into the drawing-room.

I found myself in a small and not over clean apartment, containing some poor furniture that looked as if it had been hurriedly set down where it stood. At the window in an easy-chair with a broken arm was sitting a woman of fifty, bareheaded and ugly, in an old green dress, and a striped worsted wrap about her neck. Her small black eyes fixed me like pins.

I went up to her and bowed.

'I have the honour of addressing the Princess Zasyekin?'

'I am the Princess Zasyekin; and you are the son of Mr. V.?'

'Yes. I have come to you with a message from my mother.'

'Sit down, please. Vonifaty, where are my keys, have you seen them?'

I communicated to Madame Zasyekin my mother's reply to her note. She heard me out, drumming with her fat red fingers on the window-pane, and when I had finished, she stared at me once more.

'Very good; I'll be sure to come,' she observed at last. 'But how young you are! How old are you, may I ask?'

'Sixteen,' I replied, with an involuntary stammer.

The princess drew out of her pocket some greasy papers covered with writing, raised them right up to her nose, and began looking through them.

'A good age,' she ejaculated suddenly, turning round restlessly on her chair. 'And do you, pray, make yourself at home. I don't stand on ceremony.'

'No, indeed,' I thought, scanning her unprepossessing person with a disgust I could not restrain.

At that instant another door flew open quickly, and in the doorway stood the girl I had seen the previous evening in the garden. She lifted her hand, and a mocking smile gleamed in her face.

'Here is my daughter,' observed the princess, indicating her with her elbow. 'Zinotchka, the son of our neighbour, Mr. V. What is your name, allow me to ask?'

'Vladimir,' I answered, getting up, and stuttering in my excitement.

'And your father's name?'

'Petrovitch.'

'Ah! I used to know a commissioner of police whose name was Vladimir Petrovitch too. Vonifaty! don't look for my keys; the keys are in my pocket.'

The young girl was still looking at me with the same smile, faintly fluttering her eyelids, and putting her head a little on one side.

'I have seen Monsieur Voldemar before,' she began. (The silvery note of her voice ran through me with a sort of sweet shiver.) 'You will let me call you so?'

'Oh, please,' I faltered.

'Where was that?' asked the princess.

The young princess did not answer her mother.

'Have you anything to do just now?' she said, not taking her eyes off me.

'Oh, no.'

'Would you like to help me wind some wool? Come in here, to me.'

She nodded to me and went out of the drawing-room. I followed her.

In the room we went into, the furniture was a little better, and was arranged with more taste. Though, indeed, at the moment, I was scarcely capable of noticing anything; I moved as in a dream and felt all through my being a sort of intense blissfulness that verged on imbecility.

The young princess sat down, took out a skein of red wool and, motioning me to a seat opposite her, carefully untied the skein and laid it across my hands. All this she did in silence with a sort of droll deliberation and with the same bright sly smile on her slightly parted lips. She began to wind the wool on a bent card, and all at once she dazzled me with a glance so brilliant and rapid, that I could not help dropping my eyes. When her eyes, which were generally half closed, opened to their full extent, her face was completely transfigured; it was as though it were flooded with light.

'What did you think of me yesterday, M'sieu Voldemar?' she asked after a brief pause. 'You thought ill of me, I expect?'

'I ... princess ... I thought nothing ... how can I?...' I answered in confusion.

'Listen,' she rejoined. 'You don't know me yet. I'm a very strange person; I like always to be told the truth. You, I have just heard, are sixteen, and I am twenty-one: you see I'm a great deal older than you, and so you ought always to tell me the truth ... and to do what I tell you,' she added. 'Look at me: why don't you look at me?'

I was still more abashed; however, I raised my eyes to her. She smiled, not her former smile, but a smile of approbation. 'Look at me,' she said, dropping her voice caressingly: 'I don't dislike that ... I like your face; I have a presentiment we shall be friends. But do you like me?' she added slyly.

'Princess ...' I was beginning.

'In the first place, you must call me Zinaïda Alexandrovna, and in the second place it's a bad habit for children'--(she corrected herself) 'for young people--not to say straight out what they feel. That's all very well for grown-up people. You like me, don't you?'

Though I was greatly delighted that she talked so freely to me, still I was a little hurt. I wanted to show her that she had not a mere boy to deal with, and assuming as easy and serious an air as I could, I observed, 'Certainly. I like you very much, Zinaïda Alexandrovna; I have no wish to conceal it.'

She shook her head very deliberately. 'Have you a tutor?' she asked suddenly.

'No; I've not had a tutor for a long, long while.'

I told a lie; it was not a month since I had parted with my Frenchman.

'Oh! I see then--you are quite grown-up.'

She tapped me lightly on the fingers. 'Hold your hands straight!' And she applied herself busily to winding the ball.

I seized the opportunity when she was looking down and fell to watching her, at first stealthily, then more and more boldly. Her face struck me as even more charming than on the previous evening; everything in it was so delicate, clever, and sweet. She was sitting with her back to a window covered with a white blind, the sunshine, streaming in through the blind, shed a soft light over her fluffy golden curls, her innocent neck, her sloping shoulders, and tender untroubled bosom. I gazed at her, and how dear and near she was already to me! It seemed to me I had known her a long while and had never known anything nor lived at all till I met her.... She was wearing a dark and rather shabby dress and an apron; I would gladly, I felt, have kissed every fold of that dress and apron. The tips of her little shoes peeped out from under her skirt; I could have bowed down in adoration to those shoes.... 'And here I am sitting before her,' I thought; 'I have made acquaintance with her ... what happiness, my God!' I could hardly keep from jumping up from my chair in ecstasy, but I only swung my legs a little, like a small child who has been given sweetmeats.

I was as happy as a fish in water, and I could have stayed in that room for ever, have never left that place.

Her eyelids were slowly lifted, and once more her clear eyes shone kindly upon me, and again she smiled.

'How you look at me!' she said slowly, and she held up a threatening finger.

I blushed ... 'She understands it all, she sees all,' flashed through my mind. 'And how could she fail to understand and see it all?'

All at once there was a sound in the next room--the clink of a sabre.

'Zina!' screamed the princess in the drawing-room, 'Byelovzorov has brought you a kitten.'

'A kitten!' cried Zinaïda, and getting up from her chair impetuously, she flung the ball of worsted on my knees and ran away.

I too got up and, laying the skein and the ball of wool on the window-sill, I went into the drawing-room and stood still, hesitating. In the middle of the room, a tabby kitten was lying with outstretched paws; Zinaïda was on her knees before it, cautiously lifting up its little face. Near the old princess, and filling up almost the whole space between the two windows, was a flaxen curly-headed young man, a hussar, with a rosy face and prominent eyes.

'What a funny little thing!' Zinaïda was saying; 'and its eyes are not grey, but green, and what long ears! Thank you, Viktor Yegoritch! you are very kind.'

The hussar, in whom I recognised one of the young men I had seen the evening before, smiled and bowed with a clink of his spurs and a jingle of the chain of his sabre.

'You were pleased to say yesterday that you wished to possess a tabby kitten with long ears ... so I obtained it. Your word is law.' And he bowed again.

The kitten gave a feeble mew and began sniffing the ground.

'It's hungry!' cried Zinaïda. 'Vonifaty, Sonia! bring some milk.'

A maid, in an old yellow gown with a faded kerchief at her neck, came in with a saucer of milk and set it before the kitten. The kitten started, blinked, and began lapping.

'What a pink little tongue it has!' remarked Zinaïda, putting her head almost on the ground and peeping at it sideways under its very nose.

The kitten having had enough began to purr and move its paws affectedly. Zinaïda got up, and turning to the maid said carelessly, 'Take it away.'

'For the kitten--your little hand,' said the hussar, with a simper and a shrug of his strongly-built frame, which was tightly buttoned up in a new uniform.

'Both,' replied Zinaïda, and she held out her hands to him. While he was kissing them, she looked at me over his shoulder.

I stood stockstill in the same place and did not know whether to laugh, to say something, or to be silent. Suddenly through the open door into the passage I caught sight of our footman, Fyodor. He was making signs to me. Mechanically I went out to him.

'What do you want?' I asked.

'Your mamma has sent for you,' he said in a whisper. 'She is angry that you have not come back with the answer.'

'Why, have I been here long?'

'Over an hour.'

'Over an hour!' I repeated unconsciously, and going back to the drawing-room I began to make bows and scrape with my heels.

'Where are you off to?' the young princess asked, glancing at me from behind the hussar.

'I must go home. So I am to say,' I added, addressing the old lady, 'that you will come to us about two.'

'Do you say so, my good sir.'

The princess hurriedly pulled out her snuff-box and took snuff so loudly that I positively jumped. 'Do you say so,' she repeated, blinking tearfully and sneezing.

I bowed once more, turned, and went out of the room with that sensation of awkwardness in my spine which a very young man feels when he knows he is being looked at from behind.

'Mind you come and see us again, M'sieu Voldemar,' Zinaïda called, and she laughed again.

'Why is it she's always laughing?' I thought, as I went back home escorted by Fyodor, who said nothing to me, but walked behind me with an air of disapprobation. My mother scolded me and wondered what ever I could have been doing so long at the princess's. I made her no reply and went off to my own room. I felt suddenly very sad.... I tried hard not to cry.... I was jealous of the hussar.

V

The princess called on my mother as she had promised and made a disagreeable impression on her. I was not present at their interview, but at table my mother told my father that this Prince Zasyekin struck her as a femme très vulgaire, that she had quite worn her out begging her to interest Prince Sergei in their behalf, that she seemed to have no end of lawsuits and affairs on hand--de vilaines affaires d'argent--and must be a very troublesome and litigious person. My mother added, however, that she had asked her and her daughter to dinner the next day (hearing the word 'daughter' I buried my nose in my plate), for after all she was a neighbour and a person of title. Upon this my father informed my mother that he remembered now who this lady was; that he had in his youth known the deceased Prince Zasyekin, a very well-bred, but frivolous and absurd person; that he had been nicknamed in society 'le Parisien,' from having lived a long while in Paris; that he had been very rich, but had gambled away all his property; and for some unknown reason, probably for money, though indeed he might have chosen better, if so, my father added with a cold smile, he had married the daughter of an agent, and after his marriage had entered upon speculations and ruined himself utterly.

'If only she doesn't try to borrow money,' observed my mother.

'That's exceedingly possible,' my father responded tranquilly. 'Does she speak French?'

'Very badly.'

'H'm. It's of no consequence anyway. I think you said you had asked the daughter too; some one was telling me she was a very charming and cultivated girl.'

'Ah! Then she can't take after her mother.'

'Nor her father either,' rejoined my father. 'He was cultivated indeed, but a fool.'

My mother sighed and sank into thought. My father said no more. I felt very uncomfortable during this conversation.

After dinner I went into the garden, but without my gun. I swore to myself that I would not go near the Zasyekins' garden, but an irresistible force drew me thither, and not in vain. I had hardly reached the fence when I caught sight of Zinaïda. This time she was alone. She held a book in her hands, and was coming slowly along the path. She did not notice me.

I almost let her pass by; but all at once I changed my mind and coughed.

She turned round, but did not stop, pushed back with one hand the broad blue ribbon of her round straw hat, looked at me, smiled slowly, and again bent her eyes on the book.

I took off my cap, and after hesitating a moment, walked away with a heavy heart. 'Que suis-je pour elle?' I thought (God knows why) in French.

Familiar footsteps sounded behind me; I looked round, my father came up to me with his light, rapid walk.

'Is that the young princess?' he asked me.

'Yes.'

'Why, do you know her?'

'I saw her this morning at the princess's.'

My father stopped, and, turning sharply on his heel, went back. When he was on a level with Zinaïda, he made her a courteous bow. She, too, bowed to him, with some astonishment on her face, and dropped her book. I saw how she looked after him. My father was always irreproachably dressed, simple and in a style of his own; but his figure had never struck me as more graceful, never had his grey hat sat more becomingly on his curls, which were scarcely perceptibly thinner than they had once been.

I bent my steps toward Zinaïda, but she did not even glance at me; she picked up her book again and went away.

VI

The whole evening and the following day I spent in a sort of dejected apathy. I remember I tried to work and took up Keidanov, but the boldly printed lines and pages of the famous text-book passed before my eyes in vain. I read ten times over the words: 'Julius Caesar was distinguished by warlike courage.' I did not understand anything and threw the book aside. Before dinner-time I pomaded myself once more, and once more put on my tail-coat and necktie.

'What's that for?' my mother demanded. 'You're not a student yet, and God knows whether you'll get through the examination. And you've not long had a new jacket! You can't throw it away!'

'There will be visitors,' I murmured almost in despair.

'What nonsense! fine visitors indeed!'

I had to submit. I changed my tail-coat for my jacket, but I did not take off the necktie. The princess and her daughter made their appearance half an hour before dinner-time; the old lady had put on, in addition to the green dress with which I was already acquainted, a yellow shawl, and an old-fashioned cap adorned with flame-coloured ribbons. She began talking at once about her money difficulties, sighing, complaining of her poverty, and imploring assistance, but she made herself at home; she took snuff as noisily, and fidgeted and lolled about in her chair as freely as ever. It never seemed to have struck her that she was a princess. Zinaïda on the other hand was rigid, almost haughty in her demeanour, every inch a princess. There was a cold immobility and dignity in her face. I should not have recognised it; I should not have known her smiles, her glances, though I thought her exquisite in this new aspect too. She wore a light barége dress with pale blue flowers on it; her hair fell in long curls down her cheek in the English fashion; this style went well with the cold expression of her face. My father sat beside her during dinner, and entertained his neighbour with the finished and serene courtesy peculiar to him. He glanced at her from time to time, and she glanced at him, but so strangely, almost with hostility. Their conversation was carried on in French; I was surprised, I remember, at the purity of Zinaïda's accent. The princess, while we were at table, as before made no ceremony; she ate a great deal, and praised the dishes. My mother was obviously bored by her, and answered her with a sort of weary indifference; my father faintly frowned now and then. My mother did not like Zinaïda either. 'A conceited minx,' she said next day. 'And fancy, what she has to be conceited about, avec sa mine de grisette!'

'It's clear you have never seen any grisettes,' my father observed to her.

'Thank God, I haven't!'

'Thank God, to be sure ... only how can you form an opinion of them, then?'

To me Zinaïda had paid no attention whatever. Soon after dinner the princess got up to go.

'I shall rely on your kind offices, Maria Nikolaevna and Piotr Vassilitch,' she said in a doleful sing-song to my mother and father. 'I've no help for it! There were days, but they are over. Here I am, an excellency, and a poor honour it is with nothing to eat!'

My father made her a respectful bow and escorted her to the door of the hall. I was standing there in my short jacket, staring at the floor, like a man under sentence of death. Zinaïda's treatment of me had crushed me utterly. What was my astonishment, when, as she passed me, she whispered quickly with her former kind expression in her eyes: 'Come to see us at eight, do you hear, be sure....' I simply threw up my hands, but already she was gone, flinging a white scarf over her head.

VII

At eight o'clock precisely, in my tail-coat and with my hair brushed up into a tuft on my head, I entered the passage of the lodge, where the princess lived. The old servant looked crossly at me and got up unwillingly from his bench. There was a sound of merry voices in the drawing-room. I opened the door and fell back in amazement. In the middle of the room was the young princess, standing on a chair, holding a man's hat in front of her; round the chair crowded some half a dozen men. They were trying to put their hands into the hat, while she held it above their heads, shaking it violently. On seeing me, she cried, 'Stay, stay, another guest, he must have a ticket too,' and leaping lightly down from the chair she took me by the cuff of my coat 'Come along,' she said, 'why are you standing still? Messieurs, let me make you acquainted: this is M'sieu Voldemar, the son of our neighbour. And this,' she went on, addressing me, and indicating her guests in turn, 'Count Malevsky, Doctor Lushin, Meidanov the poet, the retired captain Nirmatsky, and Byelovzorov the hussar, whom you've seen already. I hope you will be good friends.' I was so confused that I did not even bow to any one; in Doctor Lushin I recognised the dark man who had so mercilessly put me to shame in the garden; the others were unknown to me.

'Count!' continued Zinaïda, 'write M'sieu Voldemar a ticket.'

'That's not fair,' was objected in a slight Polish accent by the count, a very handsome and fashionably dressed brunette, with expressive brown eyes, a thin little white nose, and delicate little moustaches over a tiny mouth. 'This gentleman has not been playing forfeits with us.'

'It's unfair,' repeated in chorus Byelovzorov and the gentleman described as a retired captain, a man of forty, pock-marked to a hideous degree, curly-headed as a negro, round-shouldered, bandy-legged, and dressed in a military coat without epaulets, worn unbuttoned.

'Write him a ticket, I tell you,' repeated the young princess. 'What's this mutiny? M'sieu Voldemar is with us for the first time, and there are no rules for him yet. It's no use grumbling--write it, I wish it.'

The count shrugged his shoulders but bowed submissively, took the pen in his white, ring-bedecked fingers, tore off a scrap of paper and wrote on it.

'At least let us explain to Mr. Voldemar what we are about,' Lushin began in a sarcastic voice, 'or else he will be quite lost. Do you see, young man, we are playing forfeits? the princess has to pay a forfeit, and the one who draws the lucky lot is to have the privilege of kissing her hand. Do you understand what I've told you?'

I simply stared at him, and continued to stand still in bewilderment, while the young princess jumped up on the chair again, and again began waving the hat. They all stretched up to her, and I went after the rest.

'Meidanov,' said the princess to a tall young man with a thin face, little dim-sighted eyes, and exceedingly long black hair, 'you as a poet ought to be magnanimous, and give up your number to M'sieu Voldemar so that he may have two chances instead of one.'

But Meidanov shook his head in refusal, and tossed his hair. After all the others I put my hand into the hat, and unfolded my lot.... Heavens! what was my condition when I saw on it the word, Kiss!

'Kiss!' I could not help crying aloud.

'Bravo! he has won it,' the princess said quickly. 'How glad I am!' She came down from the chair and gave me such a bright sweet look, that my heart bounded. 'Are you glad?' she asked me.

'Me?' ... I faltered.

'Sell me your lot,' Byelovzorov growled suddenly just in my ear. 'I'll give you a hundred roubles.'

I answered the hussar with such an indignant look, that Zinaïda clapped her hands, while Lushin cried, 'He's a fine fellow!'

'But, as master of the ceremonies,' he went on, 'it's my duty to see that all the rules are kept. M'sieu Voldemar, go down on one knee. That is our regulation.'

Zinaïda stood in front of me, her head a little on one side as though to get a better look at me; she held out her hand to me with dignity. A mist passed before my eyes; I meant to drop on one knee, sank on both, and pressed my lips to Zinaïda's fingers so awkwardly that I scratched myself a little with the tip of her nail.

'Well done!' cried Lushin, and helped me to get up.

The game of forfeits went on. Zinaïda sat me down beside her. She invented all sorts of extraordinary forfeits! She had among other things to represent a 'statue,' and she chose as a pedestal the hideous Nirmatsky, told him to bow down in an arch, and bend his head down on his breast. The laughter never paused for an instant. For me, a boy constantly brought up in the seclusion of a dignified manor-house, all this noise and uproar, this unceremonious, almost riotous gaiety, these relations with unknown persons, were simply intoxicating. My head went round, as though from wine. I began laughing and talking louder than the others, so much so that the old princess, who was sitting in the next room with some sort of clerk from the Tversky gate, invited by her for consultation on business, positively came in to look at me. But I felt so happy that I did not mind anything, I didn't care a straw for any one's jeers, or dubious looks. Zinaïda continued to show me a preference, and kept me at her side. In one forfeit, I had to sit by her, both hidden under one silk handkerchief: I was to tell her my secret. I remember our two heads being all at once in a warm, half-transparent, fragrant darkness, the soft, close brightness of her eyes in the dark, and the burning breath from her parted lips, and the gleam of her teeth and the ends of her hair tickling me and setting me on fire. I was silent. She smiled slyly and mysteriously, and at last whispered to me, 'Well, what is it?' but I merely blushed and laughed, and turned away, catching my breath. We got tired of forfeits--we began to play a game with a string. My God! what were my transports when, for not paying attention, I got a sharp and vigorous slap on my fingers from her, and how I tried afterwards to pretend that I was absent-minded, and she teased me, and would not touch the hands I held out to her! What didn't we do that evening! We played the piano, and sang and danced and acted a gypsy encampment. Nirmatsky was dressed up as a bear, and made to drink salt water. Count Malevsky showed us several sorts of card tricks, and finished, after shuffling the cards, by dealing himself all the trumps at whist, on which Lushin 'had the honour of congratulating him.' Meidanov recited portions from his poem 'The Manslayer' (romanticism was at its height at this period), which he intended to bring out in a black cover with the title in blood-red letters; they stole the clerk's cap off his knee, and made him dance a Cossack dance by way of ransom for it; they dressed up old Vonifaty in a woman's cap, and the young princess put on a man's hat.... I could not enumerate all we did. Only Byelovzorov kept more and more in the background, scowling and angry.... Sometimes his eyes looked bloodshot, he flushed all over, and it seemed every minute as though he would rush out upon us all and scatter us like shavings in all directions; but the young princess would glance at him, and shake her finger at him, and he would retire into his corner again.

We were quite worn out at last. Even the old princess, though she was ready for anything, as she expressed it, and no noise wearied her, felt tired at last, and longed for peace and quiet. At twelve o'clock at night, supper was served, consisting of a piece of stale dry cheese, and some cold turnovers of minced ham, which seemed to me more delicious than any pastry I had ever tasted; there was only one bottle of wine, and that was a strange one; a dark-coloured bottle with a wide neck, and the wine in it was of a pink hue; no one drank it, however. Tired out and faint with happiness, I left the lodge; at parting Zinaïda pressed my hand warmly, and again smiled mysteriously.

The night air was heavy and damp in my heated face; a storm seemed to be gathering; black stormclouds grew and crept across the sky, their smoky outlines visibly changing. A gust of wind shivered restlessly in the dark trees, and somewhere, far away on the horizon, muffled thunder angrily muttered as it were to itself.

I made my way up to my room by the back stairs. My old man-nurse was asleep on the floor, and I had to step over him; he waked up, saw me, and told me that my mother had again been very angry with me, and had wished to send after me again, but that my father had prevented her. (I had never gone to bed without saying good-night to my mother, and asking her blessing. There was no help for it now!)

I told my man that I would undress and go to bed by myself, and I put out the candle. But I did not undress, and did not go to bed.

I sat down on a chair, and sat a long while, as though spell-bound. What I was feeling was so new and so sweet.... I sat still, hardly looking round and not moving, drew slow breaths, and only from time to time laughed silently at some recollection, or turned cold within at the thought that I was in love, that this was she, that this was love. Zinaïda's face floated slowly before me in the darkness--floated, and did not float away; her lips still wore the same enigmatic smile, her eyes watched me, a little from one side, with a questioning, dreamy, tender look ... as at the instant of parting from her. At last I got up, walked on tiptoe to my bed, and without undressing, laid my head carefully on the pillow, as though I were afraid by an abrupt movement to disturb what filled my soul.... I lay down, but did not even close my eyes. Soon I noticed that faint glimmers of light of some sort were thrown continually into the room.... I sat up and looked at the window. The window-frame could be clearly distinguished from the mysteriously and dimly-lighted panes. It is a storm, I thought; and a storm it really was, but it was raging so very far away that the thunder could not be heard; only blurred, long, as it were branching, gleams of lightning flashed continually over the sky; it was not flashing, though, so much as quivering and twitching like the wing of a dying bird. I got up, went to the window, and stood there till morning.... The lightning never ceased for an instant; it was what is called among the peasants a sparrow night. I gazed at the dumb sandy plain, at the dark mass of the Neskutchny gardens, at the yellowish façades of the distant buildings, which seemed to quiver too at each faint flash.... I gazed, and could not turn away; these silent lightning flashes, these gleams seemed in response to the secret silent fires which were aglow within me. Morning began to dawn; the sky was flushed in patches of crimson. As the sun came nearer, the lightning grew gradually paler, and ceased; the quivering gleams were fewer and fewer, and vanished at last, drowned in the sobering positive light of the coming day....

And my lightning flashes vanished too. I felt great weariness and peace ... but Zinaïda's image still floated triumphant over my soul. But it too, this image, seemed more tranquil: like a swan rising out of the reeds of a bog, it stood out from the other unbeautiful figures surrounding it, and as I fell asleep, I flung myself before it in farewell, trusting adoration....

Oh, sweet emotions, gentle harmony, goodness and peace of the softened heart, melting bliss of the first raptures of love, where are they, where are they?

VIII

The next morning, when I came down to tea, my mother scolded me--less severely, however, than I had expected--and made me tell her how I had spent the previous evening. I answered her in few words, omitting many details, and trying to give the most innocent air to everything.

'Anyway, they're people who're not comme il faut,' my mother commented, 'and you've no business to be hanging about there, instead of preparing yourself for the examination, and doing your work.'

As I was well aware that my mother's anxiety about my studies was confined to these few words, I did not feel it necessary to make any rejoinder; but after morning tea was over, my father took me by the arm, and turning into the garden with me, forced me to tell him all I had seen at the Zasyekins'.

A curious influence my father had over me, and curious were the relations existing between us. He took hardly any interest in my education, but he never hurt my feelings; he respected my freedom, he treated me--if I may so express it--with courtesy,... only he never let me be really close to him. I loved him, I admired him, he was my ideal of a man--and Heavens! how passionately devoted I should have been to him, if I had not been continually conscious of his holding me off! But when he liked, he could almost instantaneously, by a single word, a single gesture, call forth an unbounded confidence in him. My soul expanded, I chattered away to him, as to a wise friend, a kindly teacher ... then he as suddenly got rid of me, and again he was keeping me off, gently and affectionately, but still he kept me off.

Sometimes he was in high spirits, and then he was ready to romp and frolic with me, like a boy (he was fond of vigorous physical exercise of every sort); once--it never happened a second time!--he caressed me with such tenderness that I almost shed tears.... But high spirits and tenderness alike vanished completely, and what had passed between us, gave me nothing to build on for the future--it was as though I had dreamed it all. Sometimes I would scrutinise his clever handsome bright face ... my heart would throb, and my whole being yearn to him ... he would seem to feel what was going on within me, would give me a passing pat on the cheek, and go away, or take up some work, or suddenly freeze all over as only he knew how to freeze, and I shrank into myself at once, and turned cold too. His rare fits of friendliness to me were never called forth by my silent, but intelligible entreaties: they always occurred unexpectedly. Thinking over my father's character later, I have come to the conclusion that he had no thoughts to spare for me and for family life; his heart was in other things, and found complete satisfaction elsewhere. 'Take for yourself what you can, and don't be ruled by others; to belong to oneself--the whole savour of life lies in that,' he said to me one day. Another time, I, as a young democrat, fell to airing my views on liberty (he was 'kind,' as I used to call it, that day; and at such times I could talk to him as I liked). 'Liberty,' he repeated; 'and do you know what can give a man liberty?'

'What?'

'Will, his own will, and it gives power, which is better than liberty. Know how to will, and you will be free, and will lead.'

'My father, before all, and above all, desired to live, and lived.... Perhaps he had a presentiment that he would not have long to enjoy the 'savour' of life: he died at forty-two.

I described my evening at the Zasyekins' minutely to my father. Half attentively, half carelessly, he listened to me, sitting on a garden seat, drawing in the sand with his cane. Now and then he laughed, shot bright, droll glances at me, and spurred me on with short questions and assents. At first I could not bring myself even to utter the name of Zinaïda, but I could not restrain myself long, and began singing her praises. My father still laughed; then he grew thoughtful, stretched, and got up. I remembered that as he came out of the house he had ordered his horse to be saddled. He was a splendid horseman, and, long before Rarey, had the secret of breaking in the most vicious horses.

'Shall I come with you, father?' I asked.

'No,' he answered, and his face resumed its ordinary expression of friendly indifference. 'Go alone, if you like; and tell the coachman I'm not going.'

He turned his back on me and walked rapidly away. I looked after him; he disappeared through the gates. I saw his hat moving along beside the fence; he went into the Zasyekins'.

He stayed there not more than an hour, but then departed at once for the town, and did not return home till evening.

After dinner I went myself to the Zasyekins'. In the drawing-room I found only the old princess. On seeing me she scratched her head under her cap with a knitting-needle, and suddenly asked me, could I copy a petition for her.

'With pleasure,' I replied, sitting down on the edge of a chair.

'Only mind and make the letters bigger,' observed the princess, handing me a dirty sheet of paper; 'and couldn't you do it to-day, my good sir?'

'Certainly, I will copy it to-day.'

The door of the next room was just opened, and in the crack I saw the face of Zinaïda, pale and pensive, her hair flung carelessly back; she stared at me with big chilly eyes, and softly closed the door.

'Zina, Zina!' called the old lady. Zinaïda made no response. I took home the old lady's petition and spent the whole evening over it.

IX

My 'passion' dated from that day. I felt at that time, I recollect, something like what a man must feel on entering the service: I had ceased now to be simply a young boy; I was in love. I have said that my passion dated from that day; I might have added that my sufferings too dated from the same day. Away from Zinaïda I pined; nothing was to my mind; everything went wrong with me; I spent whole days thinking intensely about her ... I pined when away,... but in her presence I was no better off. I was jealous; I was conscious of my insignificance; I was stupidly sulky or stupidly abject, and, all the same, an invincible force drew me to her, and I could not help a shudder of delight whenever I stepped through the doorway of her room. Zinaïda guessed at once that I was in love with her, and indeed I never even thought of concealing it. She amused herself with my passion, made a fool of me, petted and tormented me. There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another, and I was like wax in Zinaïda's hands; though, indeed, I was not the only one in love with her. All the men who visited the house were crazy over her, and she kept them all in leading-strings at her feet. It amused her to arouse their hopes and then their fears, to turn them round her finger (she used to call it knocking their heads together), while they never dreamed of offering resistance and eagerly submitted to her. About her whole being, so full of life and beauty, there was a peculiarly bewitching mixture of slyness and carelessness, of artificiality and simplicity, of composure and frolicsomeness; about everything she did or said, about every action of hers, there clung a delicate, fine charm, in which an individual power was manifest at work. And her face was ever changing, working too; it expressed, almost at the same time, irony, dreaminess, and passion. Various emotions, delicate and quick-changing as the shadows of clouds on a sunny day of wind, chased one another continually over her lips and eyes.

Each of her adorers was necessary to her. Byelovzorov, whom she sometimes called 'my wild beast,' and sometimes simply 'mine,' would gladly have flung himself into the fire for her sake. With little confidence in his intellectual abilities and other qualities, he was for ever offering her marriage, hinting that the others were merely hanging about with no serious intention. Meidanov responded to the poetic fibres of her nature; a man of rather cold temperament, like almost all writers, he forced himself to convince her, and perhaps himself, that he adored her, sang her praises in endless verses, and read them to her with a peculiar enthusiasm, at once affected and sincere. She sympathised with him, and at the same time jeered at him a little; she had no great faith in him, and after listening to his outpourings, she would make him read Pushkin, as she said, to clear the air. Lushin, the ironical doctor, so cynical in words, knew her better than any of them, and loved her more than all, though he abused her to her face and behind her back. She could not help respecting him, but made him smart for it, and at times, with a peculiar, malignant pleasure, made him feel that he too was at her mercy. 'I'm a flirt, I'm heartless, I'm an actress in my instincts,' she said to him one day in my presence; 'well and good! Give me your hand then; I'll stick this pin in it, you'll be ashamed of this young man's seeing it, it will hurt you, but you'll laugh for all that, you truthful person.' Lushin crimsoned, turned away, bit his lips, but ended by submitting his hand. She pricked it, and he did in fact begin to laugh,... and she laughed, thrusting the pin in pretty deeply, and peeping into his eyes, which he vainly strove to keep in other directions....

I understood least of all the relations existing between Zinaïda and Count Malevsky. He was handsome, clever, and adroit, but something equivocal, something false in him was apparent even to me, a boy of sixteen, and I marvelled that Zinaïda did not notice it. But possibly she did notice this element of falsity really and was not repelled by it. Her irregular education, strange acquaintances and habits, the constant presence of her mother, the poverty and disorder in their house, everything, from the very liberty the young girl enjoyed, with the consciousness of her superiority to the people around her, had developed in her a sort of half-contemptuous carelessness and lack of fastidiousness. At any time anything might happen; Vonifaty might announce that there was no sugar, or some revolting scandal would come to her ears, or her guests would fall to quarrelling among themselves--she would only shake her curls, and say, 'What does it matter?' and care little enough about it.

But my blood, anyway, was sometimes on fire with indignation when Malevsky approached her, with a sly, fox-like action, leaned gracefully on the back of her chair, and began whispering in her ear with a self-satisfied and ingratiating little smile, while she folded her arms across her bosom, looked intently at him and smiled too, and shook her head.

'What induces you to receive Count Malevsky?' I asked her one day.

'He has such pretty moustaches,' she answered. 'But that's rather beyond you.'

'You needn't think I care for him,' she said to me another time. 'No; I can't care for people I have to look down upon. I must have some one who can master me.... But, merciful heavens, I hope I may never come across any one like that! I don't want to be caught in any one's claws, not for anything.'

'You'll never be in love, then?'

'And you? Don't I love you?' she said, and she flicked me on the nose with the tip of her glove.

Yes, Zinaïda amused herself hugely at my expense. For three weeks I saw her every day, and what didn't she do with me! She rarely came to see us, and I was not sorry for it; in our house she was transformed into a young lady, a young princess, and I was a little overawed by her. I was afraid of betraying myself before my mother; she had taken a great dislike to Zinaïda, and kept a hostile eye upon us. My father I was not so much afraid of; he seemed not to notice me. He talked little to her, but always with special cleverness and significance. I gave up working and reading; I even gave up walking about the neighbourhood and riding my horse. Like a beetle tied by the leg, I moved continually round and round my beloved little lodge. I would gladly have stopped there altogether, it seemed ... but that was impossible. My mother scolded me, and sometimes Zinaïda herself drove me away. Then I used to shut myself up in my room, or go down to the very end of the garden, and climbing into what was left of a tall stone greenhouse, now in ruins, sit for hours with my legs hanging over the wall that looked on to the road, gazing and gazing and seeing nothing. White butterflies flitted lazily by me, over the dusty nettles; a saucy sparrow settled not far off on the half crumbling red brickwork and twittered irritably, incessantly twisting and turning and preening his tail-feathers; the still mistrustful rooks cawed now and then, sitting high, high up on the bare top of a birch-tree; the sun and wind played softly on its pliant branches; the tinkle of the bells of the Don monastery floated across to me from time to time, peaceful and dreary; while I sat, gazed, listened, and was filled full of a nameless sensation in which all was contained: sadness and joy and the foretaste of the future, and the desire and dread of life. But at that time I understood nothing of it, and could have given a name to nothing of all that was passing at random within me, or should have called it all by one name--the name of Zinaïda.

Zinaïda continued to play cat and mouse with me. She flirted with me, and I was all agitation and rapture; then she would suddenly thrust me away, and I dared not go near her--dared not look at her.

I remember she was very cold to me for several days together; I was completely crushed, and creeping timidly to their lodge, tried to keep close to the old princess, regardless of the circumstance that she was particularly scolding and grumbling just at that time; her financial affairs had been going badly, and she had already had two 'explanations' with the police officials.

One day I was walking in the garden beside the familiar fence, and I caught sight of Zinaïda; leaning on both arms, she was sitting on the grass, not stirring a muscle. I was about to make off cautiously, but she suddenly raised her head and beckoned me imperiously. My heart failed me; I did not understand her at first. She repeated her signal. I promptly jumped over the fence and ran joyfully up to her, but she brought me to a halt with a look, and motioned me to the path two paces from her. In confusion, not knowing what to do, I fell on my knees at the edge of the path. She was so pale, such bitter suffering, such intense weariness, was expressed in every feature of her face, that it sent a pang to my heart, and I muttered unconsciously, 'What is the matter?'

Zinaïda stretched out her head, picked a blade of grass, bit it and flung it away from her.

'You love me very much?' she asked at last. 'Yes.'

I made no answer--indeed, what need was there to answer?

'Yes,' she repeated, looking at me as before. 'That's so. The same eyes,'--she went on; sank into thought, and hid her face in her hands. 'Everything's grown so loathsome to me,' she whispered, 'I would have gone to the other end of the world first--I can't bear it, I can't get over it.... And what is there before me!... Ah, I am wretched.... My God, how wretched I am!'

'What for?' I asked timidly.

Zinaïda made no answer, she simply shrugged her shoulders. I remained kneeling, gazing at her with intense sadness. Every word she had uttered simply cut me to the heart. At that instant I felt I would gladly have given my life, if only she should not grieve. I gazed at her--and though I could not understand why she was wretched, I vividly pictured to myself, how in a fit of insupportable anguish, she had suddenly come out into the garden, and sunk to the earth, as though mown down by a scythe. It was all bright and green about her; the wind was whispering in the leaves of the trees, and swinging now and then a long branch of a raspberry bush over Zinaïda's head. There was a sound of the cooing of doves, and the bees hummed, flying low over the scanty grass, Overhead the sun was radiantly blue--while I was so sorrowful....

'Read me some poetry,' said Zinaïda in an undertone, and she propped herself on her elbow; 'I like your reading poetry. You read it in sing-song, but that's no matter, that comes of being young. Read me "On the Hills of Georgia." Only sit down first.'

I sat down and read 'On the Hills of Georgia.'

'"That the heart cannot choose but love,"' repeated Zinaïda. 'That's where poetry's so fine; it tells us what is not, and what's not only better than what is, but much more like the truth, "cannot choose but love,"--it might want not to, but it can't help it.' She was silent again, then all at once she started and got up. 'Come along. Meidanov's indoors with mamma, he brought me his poem, but I deserted him. His feelings are hurt too now ... I can't help it! you'll understand it all some day ... only don't be angry with me!'

Zinaïda hurriedly pressed my hand and ran on ahead. We went back into the lodge. Meidanov set to reading us his 'Manslayer,' which had just appeared in print, but I did not hear him. He screamed and drawled his four-foot iambic lines, the alternating rhythms jingled like little bells, noisy and meaningless, while I still watched Zinaïda and tried to take in the import of her last words.

'Perchance some unknown rival Has surprised and mastered thee?'

Meidanov bawled suddenly through his nose--and my eyes and Zinaïda's met. She looked down and faintly blushed. I saw her blush, and grew cold with terror. I had been jealous before, but only at that instant the idea of her being in love flashed upon my mind. 'Good God! she is in love!'

X

My real torments began from that instant. I racked my brains, changed my mind, and changed it back again, and kept an unremitting, though, as far as possible, secret watch on Zinaïda. A change had come over her, that was obvious. She began going walks alone--and long walks. Sometimes she would not see visitors; she would sit for hours together in her room. This had never been a habit of hers till now. I suddenly became--or fancied I had become--extraordinarily penetrating.

'Isn't it he? or isn't it he?' I asked myself, passing in inward agitation from one of her admirers to another. Count Malevsky secretly struck me as more to be feared than the others, though, for Zinaïda's sake, I was ashamed to confess it to myself.

My watchfulness did not see beyond the end of my nose, and its secrecy probably deceived no one; any way, Doctor Lushin soon saw through me. But he, too, had changed of late; he had grown thin, he laughed as often, but his laugh seemed more hollow, more spiteful, shorter, an involuntary nervous irritability took the place of his former light irony and assumed cynicism.

'Why are you incessantly hanging about here, young man?' he said to me one day, when we were left alone together in the Zasyekins' drawing-room. (The young princess had not come home from a walk, and the shrill voice of the old princess could be heard within; she was scolding the maid.) 'You ought to be studying, working--while you're young--and what are you doing?'

'You can't tell whether I work at home,' I retorted with some haughtiness, but also with some hesitation.

'A great deal of work you do! that's not what you're thinking about! Well, I won't find fault with that ... at your age that's in the natural order of things. But you've been awfully unlucky in your choice. Don't you see what this house is?'

'I don't understand you,' I observed.

'You don't understand? so much the worse for you. I regard it as a duty to warn you. Old bachelors, like me, can come here, what harm can it do us! we're tough, nothing can hurt us, what harm can it do us; but your skin's tender yet--this air is bad for you--believe me, you may get harm from it.'

'How so?'

'Why, are you well now? Are you in a normal condition? Is what you're feeling--beneficial to you--good for you?'

'Why, what am I feeling?' I said, while in my heart I knew the doctor was right.

'Ah, young man, young man,' the doctor went on with an intonation that suggested that something highly insulting to me was contained in these two words, 'what's the use of your prevaricating, when, thank God, what's in your heart is in your face, so far? But there, what's the use of talking? I shouldn't come here myself, if ... (the doctor compressed his lips) ... if I weren't such a queer fellow. Only this is what surprises me; how it is, you, with your intelligence, don't see what is going on around you?'

'And what is going on?' I put in, all on the alert.

The doctor looked at me with a sort of ironical compassion.

'Nice of me!' he said as though to himself, 'as if he need know anything of it. In fact, I tell you again,' he added, raising his voice, 'the atmosphere here is not fit for you. You like being here, but what of that! it's nice and sweet-smelling in a greenhouse--but there's no living in it. Yes! do as I tell you, and go back to your Keidanov.'

The old princess came in, and began complaining to the doctor of her toothache. Then Zinaïda appeared.

'Come,' said the old princess, 'you must scold her, doctor. She's drinking iced water all day long; is that good for her, pray, with her delicate chest?'

'Why do you do that?' asked Lushin.

'Why, what effect could it have?'

'What effect? You might get a chill and die.'

'Truly? Do you mean it? Very well--so much the better.'

'A fine idea!' muttered the doctor. The old princess had gone out.

'Yes, a fine idea,' repeated Zinaïda. 'Is life such a festive affair? Just look about you.... Is it nice, eh? Or do you imagine I don't understand it, and don't feel it? It gives me pleasure--drinking iced water; and can you seriously assure me that such a life is worth too much to be risked for an instant's pleasure--happiness I won't even talk about.'

'Oh, very well,' remarked Lushin, 'caprice and irresponsibility.... Those two words sum you up; your whole nature's contained in those two words.'

Zinaïda laughed nervously.

'You're late for the post, my dear doctor. You don't keep a good look-out; you're behind the times. Put on your spectacles. I'm in no capricious humour now. To make fools of you, to make a fool of myself ... much fun there is in that!--and as for irresponsibility ... M'sieu Voldemar,' Zinaïda added suddenly, stamping, 'don't make such a melancholy face. I can't endure people to pity me.' She went quickly out of the room.

'It's bad for you, very bad for you, this atmosphere, young man,' Lushin said to me once more.

XI

On the evening of the same day the usual guests were assembled at the Zasyekins'. I was among them.

The conversation turned on Meidanov's poem. Zinaïda expressed genuine admiration of it. 'But do you know what?' she said to him. 'If I were a poet, I would choose quite different subjects. Perhaps it's all nonsense, but strange ideas sometimes come into my head, especially when I'm not asleep in the early morning, when the sky begins to turn rosy and grey both at once. I would, for instance ... You won't laugh at me?'

'No, no!' we all cried, with one voice.

'I would describe,' she went on, folding her arms across her bosom and looking away, 'a whole company of young girls at night in a great boat, on a silent river. The moon is shining, and they are all in white, and wearing garlands of white flowers, and singing, you know, something in the nature of a hymn.'

'I see--I see; go on,' Meidanov commented with dreamy significance.

'All of a sudden, loud clamour, laughter, torches, tambourines on the bank.... It's a troop of Bacchantes dancing with songs and cries. It's your business to make a picture of it, Mr. Poet;... only I should like the torches to be red and to smoke a great deal, and the Bacchantes' eyes to gleam under their wreaths, and the wreaths to be dusky. Don't forget the tiger-skins, too, and goblets and gold--lots of gold....'

'Where ought the gold to be?' asked Meidanov, tossing back his sleek hair and distending his nostrils.

'Where? on their shoulders and arms and legs--everywhere. They say in ancient times women wore gold rings on their ankles. The Bacchantes call the girls in the boat to them. The girls have ceased singing their hymn--they cannot go on with it, but they do not stir, the river carries them to the bank. And suddenly one of them slowly rises.... This you must describe nicely: how she slowly gets up in the moonlight, and how her companions are afraid.... She steps over the edge of the boat, the Bacchantes surround her, whirl her away into night and darkness.... Here put in smoke in clouds and everything in confusion. There is nothing but the sound of their shrill cry, and her wreath left lying on the bank.'

Zinaïda ceased. ('Oh! she is in love!' I thought again.)

'And is that all?' asked Meidanov.

'That's all.'

'That can't be the subject of a whole poem,' he observed pompously, 'but I will make use of your idea for a lyrical fragment.'

'In the romantic style?' queried Malevsky.

'Of course, in the romantic style--Byronic.'

'Well, to my mind, Hugo beats Byron,' the young count observed negligently; 'he's more interesting.'

'Hugo is a writer of the first class,' replied Meidanov; 'and my friend, Tonkosheev, in his Spanish romance, El Trovador ...'

'Ah! is that the book with the question-marks turned upside down?' Zinaïda interrupted.

'Yes. That's the custom with the Spanish. I was about to observe that Tonkosheev ...'

'Come! you're going to argue about classicism and romanticism again,' Zinaïda interrupted him a second time.' We'd much better play ...

'Forfeits?' put in Lushin.

'No, forfeits are a bore; at comparisons.' (This game Zinaïda had invented herself. Some object was mentioned, every one tried to compare it with something, and the one who chose the best comparison got a prize.)

She went up to the window. The sun was just setting; high up in the sky were large red clouds.

'What are those clouds like?' questioned Zinaïda; and without waiting for our answer, she said, 'I think they are like the purple sails on the golden ship of Cleopatra, when she sailed to meet Antony. Do you remember, Meidanov, you were telling me about it not long ago?'

All of us, like Polonius in Hamlet, opined that the clouds recalled nothing so much as those sails, and that not one of us could discover a better comparison.

'And how old was Antony then?' inquired Zinaïda.

'A young man, no doubt,' observed Malevsky.

'Yes, a young man,' Meidanov chimed in in confirmation.

'Excuse me,' cried Lushin, 'he was over forty.'

'Over forty,' repeated Zinaïda, giving him a rapid glance....

I soon went home. 'She is in love,' my lips unconsciously repeated.... 'But with whom?'

XII

The days passed by. Zinaïda became stranger and stranger, and more and more incomprehensible. One day I went over to her, and saw her sitting in a basket-chair, her head pressed to the sharp edge of the table. She drew herself up ... her whole face was wet with tears.

'Ah, you!' she said with a cruel smile. 'Come here.'

I went up to her. She put her hand on my head, and suddenly catching hold of my hair, began pulling it.

'It hurts me,' I said at last.

'Ah! does it? And do you suppose nothing hurts me?' she replied.

'Ai!' she cried suddenly, seeing she had pulled a little tuft of hair out. 'What have I done? Poor M'sieu Voldemar!'

She carefully smoothed the hair she had torn out, stroked it round her finger, and twisted it into a ring.

'I shall put your hair in a locket and wear it round my neck,' she said, while the tears still glittered in her eyes. 'That will be some small consolation to you, perhaps ... and now good-bye.'

I went home, and found an unpleasant state of things there. My mother was having a scene with my father; she was reproaching him with something, while he, as his habit was, maintained a polite and chilly silence, and soon left her. I could not hear what my mother was talking of, and indeed I had no thought to spare for the subject; I only remember that when the interview was over, she sent for me to her room, and referred with great displeasure to the frequent visits I paid the princess, who was, in her words, une femme capable de tout. I kissed her hand (this was what I always did when I wanted to cut short a conversation) and went off to my room. Zinaïda's tears had completely overwhelmed me; I positively did not know what to think, and was ready to cry myself; I was a child after all, in spite of my sixteen years. I had now given up thinking about Malevsky, though Byelovzorov looked more and more threatening every day, and glared at the wily count like a wolf at a sheep; but I thought of nothing and of no one. I was lost in imaginings, and was always seeking seclusion and solitude. I was particularly fond of the ruined greenhouse. I would climb up on the high wall, and perch myself, and sit there, such an unhappy, lonely, and melancholy youth, that I felt sorry for myself--and how consolatory where those mournful sensations, how I revelled in them!...

One day I was sitting on the wall looking into the distance and listening to the ringing of the bells.... Suddenly something floated up to me--not a breath of wind and not a shiver, but as it were a whiff of fragrance--as it were, a sense of some one's being near.... I looked down. Below, on the path, in a light greyish gown, with a pink parasol on her shoulder, was Zinaïda, hurrying along. She caught sight of me, stopped, and pushing back the brim of her straw hat, she raised her velvety eyes to me.

'What are you doing up there at such a height?' she asked me with a rather queer smile. 'Come,' she went on, 'you always declare you love me; jump down into the road to me if you really do love me.'

Zinaïda had hardly uttered those words when I flew down, just as though some one had given me a violent push from behind. The wall was about fourteen feet high. I reached the ground on my feet, but the shock was so great that I could not keep my footing; I fell down, and for an instant fainted away. When I came to myself again, without opening my eyes, I felt Zinaïda beside me. 'My dear boy,' she was saying, bending over me, and there was a note of alarmed tenderness in her voice, 'how could you do it, dear; how could you obey?... You know I love you.... Get up.'

Her bosom was heaving close to me, her hands were caressing my head, and suddenly--what were my emotions at that moment--her soft, fresh lips began covering my face with kisses ... they touched my lips.... But then Zinaïda probably guessed by the expression of my face that I had regained consciousness, though I still kept my eyes closed, and rising rapidly to her feet, she said: 'Come, get up, naughty boy, silly, why are you lying in the dust?' I got up. 'Give me my parasol,' said Zinaïda, 'I threw it down somewhere, and don't stare at me like that ... what ridiculous nonsense! you're not hurt, are you? stung by the nettles, I daresay? Don't stare at me, I tell you.... But he doesn't understand, he doesn't answer,' she added, as though to herself.... 'Go home, M'sieu' Voldemar, brush yourself, and don't dare to follow me, or I shall be angry, and never again ...'

She did not finish her sentence, but walked rapidly away, while I sat down by the side of the road ... my legs would not support me. The nettles had stung my hands, my back ached, and my head was giddy; but the feeling of rapture I experienced then has never come a second time in my life. It turned to a sweet ache in all my limbs and found expression at last in joyful hops and skips and shouts. Yes, I was still a child.

XIII

I was so proud and light-hearted all that day, I so vividly retained on my face the feeling of Zinaïda's kisses, with such a shudder of delight I recalled every word she had uttered, I so hugged my unexpected happiness that I felt positively afraid, positively unwilling to see her, who had given rise to these new sensations. It seemed to me that now I could ask nothing more of fate, that now I ought to 'go, and draw a deep last sigh and die.' But, next day, when I went into the lodge, I felt great embarrassment, which I tried to conceal under a show of modest confidence, befitting a man who wishes to make it apparent that he knows how to keep a secret. Zinaïda received me very simply, without any emotion, she simply shook her finger at me and asked me, whether I wasn't black and blue? All my modest confidence and air of mystery vanished instantaneously and with them my embarrassment. Of course, I had not expected anything particular, but Zinaïda's composure was like a bucket of cold water thrown over me. I realised that in her eyes I was a child, and was extremely miserable! Zinaïda walked up and down the room, giving me a quick smile, whenever she caught my eye, but her thoughts were far away, I saw that clearly.... 'Shall I begin about what happened yesterday myself,' I pondered; 'ask her, where she was hurrying off so fast, so as to find out once for all' ... but with a gesture of despair, I merely went and sat down in a corner.

Byelovzorov came in; I felt relieved to see him.

'I've not been able to find you a quiet horse,' he said in a sulky voice; 'Freitag warrants one, but I don't feel any confidence in it, I am afraid.'

'What are you afraid of?' said Zinaïda; 'allow me to inquire?'

'What am I afraid of? Why, you don't know how to ride. Lord save us, what might happen! What whim is this has come over you all of a sudden?'

'Come, that's my business, Sir Wild Beast. In that case I will ask Piotr Vassilievitch.' ... (My father's name was Piotr Vassilievitch. I was surprised at her mentioning his name so lightly and freely, as though she were confident of his readiness to do her a service.)

'Oh, indeed,' retorted Byelovzorov, 'you mean to go out riding with him then?'

'With him or with some one else is nothing to do with you. Only not with you, anyway.'

'Not with me,' repeated Byelovzorov. 'As you wish. Well, I shall find you a horse.'

'Yes, only mind now, don't send some old cow. I warn you I want to gallop.'

'Gallop away by all means ... with whom is it, with Malevsky, you are going to ride?'

'And why not with him, Mr. Pugnacity? Come, be quiet,' she added, 'and don't glare. I'll take you too. You know that to my mind now Malevsky's--ugh!' She shook her head.

'You say that to console me,' growled Byelovzorov.

Zinaïda half closed her eyes. 'Does that console you? O ... O ... O ... Mr. Pugnacity!' she said at last, as though she could find no other word. 'And you, M'sieu' Voldemar, would you come with us?'

'I don't care to ... in a large party,' I muttered, not raising my eyes.

'You prefer a tête-à-tête?... Well, freedom to the free, and heaven to the saints,' she commented with a sigh. 'Go along, Byelovzorov, and bestir yourself. I must have a horse for to-morrow.'

'Oh, and where's the money to come from?' put in the old princess.

Zinaïda scowled.

'I won't ask you for it; Byelovzorov will trust me.'

'He'll trust you, will he?' ... grumbled the old princess, and all of a sudden she screeched at the top of her voice, 'Duniashka!'

'Maman, I have given you a bell to ring,' observed Zinaïda.

'Duniashka!' repeated the old lady.

Byelovzorov took leave; I went away with him. Zinaïda did not try to detain me.