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And not infrequently he thought to himself, with bitterness and a sneer: "Every evening I play the role of the beauteous Joseph; still, he at least managed to tear himself away, leaving his underwear in the hands of the ardent lady; but when will I at last get free of my yoke?" And a secret enmity for Liubka was already gnawing him.
He now frequently, for several days, would not return home; and afterwards, having come, would undergo torturesome hours of feminine interrogations, scenes, tears, even hysterical fits. Liubka would at times watch him in secret, when he went out of the house; would stop opposite the entrance that he went into, and for hours would await his return in order to reproach him and to cry in the street.
The beauty of the poem, of course, consisted in the way it sounded in the native tongue; but scarcely would he begin to read in sing-song his throaty, sibilant, hawking phrases, when Liubka would at first shake for a long time from irresistible laughter; then, finally, burst into laughter, filling the whole room with explosive, prolonged peals.
But Lichonin, seeing Liubka every day, did not notice this and did not believe those compliments which were showered upon her by his friends. "Fool jokes," he reflected, frowning. "The boys are spoofing." As the lady of the house, Liubka proved to be less than mediocre.
Let's go, Liubka, I'll escort you home for just a little while, and return in ten minutes. And in the meanwhile we'll think over ways and means here, without you. All right?" "As for me, I don't mind," almost inaudibly answered Liubka. "I'll do just as you like, Vassil Vassilich. Only I wouldn't like to go home." "Why so?" "It's awkward for me there alone.
Liubka heard it through attentively, shaking her head with great significance; asked over again about that which she did not understand in certain places, and when he had finished she thoughtfully drawled out: "Then that's what he is! He's written it up awfully good. Only why is she so low down? For he loves her so, with all his life; but she's playing him false all the time."
But when, having united the oxygen with the hydrogen brought in an empty champagne bottle, and having wrapped up the bottle for precaution in a towel, Simanovsky ordered Liubka to direct its neck toward a burning candle, and when the explosion broke out, as though four cannons had been fired off at once an explosion through which the plastering fell down from the ceiling then Liubka grew timorous, and, only getting to rights with difficulty, pronounced with trembling lips, but with dignity: "You must excuse me now, but since I have a flat of my own, and I'm not at all a wench any longer, but a decent woman, I'd ask you therefore not to misbehave in my place.
To be sure, in the very end that happened which had to happen. Seeing in perspective a whole series of hungry days, and in the very depth of them the dark horror of an unknown future, Liubka consented to a very civil invitation of some respectable little old man; important, grayish, well-dressed and correct.
Then Nijeradze in wrath would slam shut the little tome of the adored writer, and swear at Liubka, calling her a mule and a camel. However, they soon made up. There were times when fits of goatish, mischievous merriment would come upon Nijeradze.
And then, probably he understood and it must be said that these oriental men, despite their seeming naiveness and, perhaps, even owing to it possess, when they wish to, a fine psychic intuition he understood, that having made Liubka his mistress for even one minute, he would be forever deprived of this charming, quiet, domestic evening comfort, to which he had grown so used.
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