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Updated: May 13, 2025
As he got in, they were engaged in talk, and one half-hidden by the gloom, said: "Things are bad, you say?" "Couldn't be worse," replied Sanine's neighbour, an old grey-haired moujik, in a high, feeble voice. "They only think of themselves; they don't trouble about us. You may say what you like, but when it comes to fighting for your skin, the stronger always gets the best of it."
As if by an electric shock, Lida started backwards and, without knowing what she did, leant over the table and blew out the light. "It is bed-time," she said, and shut the window. The light having been extinguished, it seemed less dark out of doors, and Sanine's figure was clearly discernible, his features appearing blueish in the moonlight. He stood in the long, dew-drenched grass and smiled.
Each looked straight into the other's eyes, and Ivanoff turned away in confusion, as if he had seen a distorted reflection of his own face in a mirror. Crossing the yard, Sanine went indoors while Ivanoff waited in the dark garden, with its sombre shadows and its odour of decay. The leaves rustled under his feet as he approached Sanine's bedroom-window.
It was this darkness and this physical contact with a supple, masterful male to whom she had always been drawn, that now caused her most exquisite agitation. Her face glowed, her soft arm shared its warmth with that of Sanine's, and her laughter was forced and incessant. At the foot of the hill it was less dark.
But Sanine's words had not proved ineffectual. Hers was a vigorous, buoyant vitality; the crisis through which she had just passed had strained that vitality to the utmost. A little more pressure, and the string would have snapped. But the pressure was not applied, and her whole being vibrated once more with an impetuous, turbulent desire to live.
Tanaroff's profound contempt for the man who refused to fight a duel was blended with the implicit belief that only an officer could possibly possess the pluck and the fine sense of honour necessary to do such a thing. That is why Sanine's refusal did not surprise him in the least; in fact, he was secretly pleased.
"There you go!" exclaimed Ivanoff irritably, as he shrugged his shoulders. "If you come to think of it, duelling is absurd!" said Yourii. "Of course it is!" chimed in Sina. To his surprise, Yourii noticed that Sina seemed pleased to take Sanine's part. "At any rate, it's...." The right phrase failed him wherewith to disparage Sanine. "A brutal thing," suggested Riasantzeff.
"What nonsense!" exclaimed Novikoff testily. "I've got to see a patient..." "Who is quite able to die without your help," said Ivanoff. "For that matter, we can polish off the vodka without your help, either." "Suppose I get drunk?" thought Novikoff. "All right! I'll come," he said. As they went away, Yourii could hear at a distance Ivanoff's gruff bass voice and Sanine's careless, merry laugh.
"What a blackguardly thing to do!" shouted Yourii in Sanine's face. "Yes, blackguardly!" rejoined Sanine, with a scornful smile. "Would it have been better, do you suppose, to have let him hit me?" Then, with a careless gesture, he walked rapidly along the avenue. Ivanoff looked at Yourii in disdain, lit a cigarette, and slowly followed Sanine.
His thoughts came swiftly, incoherently, yet his suffering, and irreparable misfortune would seem to have roused something new and latent within him of which in his careless years of selfish enjoyment he had never been conscious. "Von Deitz, for instance, was always saying, 'If one smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the left. But how did he come back that day from Sanine's?
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