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Piotr smiled in a nervous and aggrieved manner, and asked: "You don't like it?" "I don't like it," said Elisaveta calmly. With her habitual subjection to the thoughts and moods of her elder sister, Elena said: "It is a rude word. I feel a reminiscence of a once helpless serfdom in it." "Nevertheless this word is now sufficiently literary," said Piotr, with a vague smile.
Elisaveta could now see, quite close to her, his fatigued, desperate eyes. There was a loud, near report of a revolver. Kiril reeled; there was the sound of breaking twigs as he fell heavily and rolled down the hollow. Presently a running Cossack came down precipitately from above. He brushed so closely past them that a twig caught by his body struck Alkina's shoulder.
Something flashed through the window and fell on the floor. The footsteps retreated. Elisaveta picked up the letter, lit a candle, and read the beloved blue sheet of paper. The nocturnal enchantress whispered to her: "He's going away. Hurry. You will know how sweet are the first kisses of love. Go to him, run after him, don't look for tiresome robes."
Elisaveta asked her in a drowsy voice: "Did I wake you?" "You cried out so," said Elena. "I've had such a stupid dream," whispered Elisaveta. She went to sleep again, and again the same hoard of books. There were so many books that even the window-sills were piled up with them, and a dim and dusty gleam of light barely penetrated. An ominous silence tormented her.
A pale-faced woman stood at its head, and wailed quietly and ceaselessly. Three pale, sandy-haired children came in and looked at the visitors; their gaze was at once strange and stupid, neither joyous nor sad, but dulled for ever. Elisaveta went up to the woman.
You praise me to my eyes as if I were a charming piece of property." Stchemilov suddenly flushed with embarrassment; his habitual self-assurance appeared to have left him unexpectedly. He breathed heavily and stammered out in confusion: "Comrade Elisaveta, you are a fine person. Don't be offended at my words. I love you.
Rameyev continued: "I have been observing Elisaveta very attentively of late. And listen to what I say pardon me for my frankness I have come to the conclusion that you'd be better off with Elena. Perhaps you have also erred in your feelings." Piotr replied with a bitter smile: "Why, of course Elena is more simple.
You have never thought over its true meaning." "I've had little time to think over anything," observed Elisaveta calmly, "but the feeling of freedom is the thing nearest to me. I cannot express it in words I only know that we are fettered on this earth by iron bonds of necessity and of circumstance, but the nature of my soul is freedom; its fire is consuming the chains of my material dependence.
Several days had already passed without his visiting the Rameyevs. He did not even come on those days on which they grew accustomed to expect him. Elisaveta thought this a deliberate incivility, and it hurt her feelings. But whenever Piotr abused him she defended him.
They would go off somewhere into a neglected part of the garden, where under the spread net of superb black poplars the agreeable aroma of thyme reached them with a gentle poignancy and here they loved to chat with one another. Had he been alone instead of with Elisaveta, he could not have expressed his thoughts more simply or more candidly.
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