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Updated: May 26, 2025
He was even led to reflect upon Christianity and its fate, but this bored him to such an extent that he fell asleep, and did not wake until evening had turned to night. Maria Ivanovna watched him go, and she, too, sighing deeply, became immersed in thought. Sarudine, so she said to herself, was obviously paying court to Lida, and she hoped that his intentions were serious.
She longed to shake her fist at him, to fling her scorn in his face, to revenge herself on him for having humiliated her thus. But she felt that at the very first words she would burst into tears. A last spark of pride, all that remained of the handsome, dashing Lida, deterred her. In a tone of such intense scorn that it surprised herself as much as Sarudine, she hissed out, "You brute!"
"Your Excellency mustn't take it so to heart. You'll soon be all right again," said the kindly soldier, as he proffered water in a sticky glass which smelt of tea. Sarudine could not drink; his teeth rattled helplessly against the rim of the glass, and the water was spilt over his coat. "Go away!" he feebly moaned.
"Copecks? Not I! Roubles, my friend, roubles!" "H m!" muttered Sarudine, shrugging his shoulders. He did not like Ivanoff, whose jokes to him were unintelligible. "Yes, they were all caught, and the cave was filled up; it gradually collapsed, and no one ever goes into it now. As a child I often used to creep in there. It is a most interesting place." "Interesting?
Filled with shame and grief and revenge, her burning eyes were set on her seducer, and seemed to pierce him through and through. Volochine again began to babble, while Lida interrupted him with laughter that concealed her tears. "I think that we ought to be going," said Sarudine, at last, who felt that the situation was becoming intolerable.
Volochine had clothed his puny little body in virgin white, after sprinkling himself from head to foot with various essences; and, although he did not exactly approve of Sarudine's society, he hailed a droschky and hastened to the latter's rooms. Sarudine was sitting at the window, drinking cold tea. "What a lovely evening!" he kept saying to himself, as he looked out on the garden.
From mere animal curiosity Tanaroff hastily glanced at him, and then, in a moment, looked elsewhere. Almost imperceptible as this movement had been, Sarudine noticed it with unutterable anguish and despair. He shut his eyes tighter, and exclaimed, in a broken, tearful voice: "Leave me! Leave me! Oh! Oh!" Tanaroff glanced again at him. Suddenly a feeling of irritation and contempt possessed him.
It flashed across him that this life of his, after all, had not been either good, or glad, or sane, but foolish, perverted and base. Sarudine, the handsome Sarudine, entitled to all that was best and most enjoyable in life, no longer existed. There was only a feeble, emasculated body left to bear all this pain and dishonour.
Yet he found it difficult to keep up such superficial conversation. "Woman" was the theme that he longed to approach, and it underlay all his stale jokes and stories of the strike at his St. Petersburg factory. As he lighted another cigar he took the opportunity of looking hard at Sarudine. Their eyes met, and they instantly understood each other.
Sarudine, startled, opened his eyes and, in the dimly-lighted room, saw a basin with water, a towel, and the dark window, that like an awful eye, stared at him mysteriously. "No, no, there's no help for it now," he thought, in dull despair. "They all saw it; saw how I was struck in the face, and how I crawled along on all fours. Oh! the shame of it! Struck like that, in the face!
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