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"Do you know the news?" he said. "What news?" asked Wratislaw. "That your family position is changed, or that the dissolution will be a week earlier, or that Marka is busy again?" "I mean the last. How did you know? Did you see the telegrams?" "No, I saw it in the papers." "Good Heavens!" said the great man.
Any one else would would get their heads out of this noose as soon as possible, but we are in it, and we shall perhaps tighten it round each other's necks!" "What do you mean?" said Marka, looking at him fearfully, as he stood there grim, strong and cold. "Nothing! If he were to die! That's all. If he were to die what a good thing it would be! Everything would be straight then!
It was Mitia who was complaining about us to Sergei; and it was he who cried out with trouble, and Sergei was cursing us!" Marka questioned anxiously Silan's face, which, after her words, became grim and coldly stubborn. "Well!" shortly. "Well, that's all!" "If that's all, there was nothing to say." "Don't get angry." "Angry with you? I should like to be angry with you, but I can't."
From the north, in the direction of the plain, came the confused sound of an army in camp. But to the south there was a glimpse through an aperture of hill of a far side of mountain, and on it a gleam as of fire. Marka, clad in the uniform of a captain of Cossacks, looked fiercely at his companion and then at the beacon. "Look," he said, "look and listen!"
Sergei and Mitia stood as if rooted to their oars, but the expression on their faces could not be distinguished by those on the forward part of the raft. Silan glanced at Marka. She was cold. She leaned forward on her pole in a doubled-up attitude.
Energetic, tall, mocking and rather malicious, he stands bare-footed, rigid, as if a part of the planks; looking straight ahead, ready at any moment to change the direction of the raft. "Just look there at your father kissing Marka! Aren't they a pair of devils? No shame, and no conscience. Why don't you get away from them, Mitia away from these Pagan pigs? Why? Do you hear?"
He glanced up at his companion, and the two men saw the same anxiety in each other's eyes. "Anything more of Marka?" asked Wratislaw. "Nothing definite. He is somewhere in the Pamirs, up to some devilry or other. Oh, by the by, there is something I have forgotten. I found out the other day that our gentleman had been down quite recently in south-west Kashmir.
You are, I said, 'because you can't stand up for yourself! You lifeless, rotten carrion! If only, I said, 'you were strong, one could kill you; but even that isn't possible! One pities you, poor, wretched creature! He only wept. Oh, Marka! This sort of thing makes one good for nothing.
The chief spoke with composure, but he had in his heart an uneasy consciousness that he had had some share in this undoing. Marka looked down at a body which lay wrinkled across the path. It was trodden all but shapeless, the poor face was unrecognizable, the legs were scrawled like a child's letters. Only one hand with a broken gold signet-ring remained to tell of the poor inmate of the clay.
He's suffering, I know. And what about me? Is my position a pleasant one? It is true that you were not his wife; but all the same, with my position, how must I feel now? Is it not a dreadful sin before God? It is a sin! I know it all, and I've gone through everything! Because it's a thing worth doing! "We love only once, and we may die any day. Oh! Marka!
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