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It was Madame Sipiagina welcoming him back home. "What glorious eyes she has!" he thought. A GREAT many people came to dinner. When it was over, Nejdanov took advantage of the general bustle and slipped away to his own room. He wanted to be alone with his own thoughts, to arrange the impressions he had carried away from his recent journey.
She was by no means afraid, but did not wish to give herself away before Madame Sipiagina. She felt the latter's keen, penetrating glance fixed on her. And, indeed, Madame Sipiagina did not take her eyes either off her or Nejdanov.
We must now say a few words about Markelov. He was six years older than his sister, Madame Sipiagina, and had been educated at an artillery school, which he left as an ensign, but sent in his resignation when he had reached the rank of lieutenant, owing to a certain unpleasantness that passed between him and his commanding officer, a German.
Nejdanov did not take part in the discussion; Madame Sipiagina watched him with an expression of approval and surprise at his modesty. They all went in to drink tea in the drawing room.
Women like Madame Sipiagina excite and disturb people of inexperienced and passionate natures, but are fond of a quiet and peaceful life themselves. Virtue comes easy to them, they are placid of temperament, but a constant desire to command, to attract, and to please gives them mobility and brilliance. They have an iron will, and a good deal of their fascination is due to this will.
Mariana suddenly drew herself up and disengaged her hands; her mood changed, she became quite cheerful, a certain audacious, scornful expression flitted across her face. "I know who is listening behind the door at this moment," she remarked, so loudly that every word could be heard distinctly in the corridor; "Madame Sipiagina is listening to us... but it makes no difference to me."
He was surrounded by a sort of mist, which seemed to hang before him like a filmy curtain, separating him from the rest of the world. And through this film, strange to say, he perceived only three faces women's faces and all three were gazing at him intently. They were Madame Sipiagina, Mashurina, and Mariana. What did it mean? Why particularly these three?
Well, I think that everything in the world repeats itself... especially what's in the nature of things... and particularly among young people." "Que voulez-vous dire?" asked Sipiagin, flinging the pamphlet on the table with a graceful gesture of the hand. "Ouvrez les yeux, et vous verrez!" Madame Sipiagina replied. They always spoke to one another in French. "H'm!" Sipiagin grunted.
It cost Madame Sipiagina very little to flirt, knowing full well that it involved no danger for herself, but to take the lustre out of another's eyes and see them sparkle again, to see another's cheeks become flushed with desire and dread, to hear another's voice tremble and break down, to disturb another's soul oh, how sweet it was to her soul!
"My sister is fond of joking," Markelov said to Nejdanov in his turn, "but I am prepared to agree with her; for one man to take a quarter of what belongs to a hundred, is certainly too much." "Do you think that I am fond of joking, Alexai Dmitritch?" Madame Sipiagina asked with that same caressing softness in her voice and in her eyes.
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