United States or United Arab Emirates ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Vladimir Petrovitch," she exclaimed, and her silly face had a scared look, "the officers have come, and they wish to speak to you." She repeated the words like a lesson that she had learnt by heart. Sanine was not surprised. He had been expecting a challenge from Sarudine. "Are they very anxious to see me?" he asked in a jocular tone.
I must have sunk very low to think of such a thing!" Burying her face in the pillows, she wept bitterly. "Why am I weeping?" she thought, not knowing the reason for such tears, but feeling miserable, humiliated, and unhappy. She wept because she had yielded herself to Sarudine, because she was no longer a proud, pure maiden, and because of that insulting, horrible look in her brother's eyes.
She no longer felt angry with Sarudine. Hardly knowing why she had gone to him, for it seemed impossible to live without him, or bear her grief alone. Yet it was as if he had just vanished from her life. The past was dead. That which remained concerned her alone; and as to that she alone could decide. Her brain worked with feverish haste, her thoughts being yet clear and plain.
"Yes," continued Sanine, after a pause, "Nature never meant men to be abstinent, and the sincerest men are those who do not conceal their desires, that is to say, those who socially count as blackguards, fellows such as you, for instance." Sarudine started back in amazement.
On the table the guttering candle was still burning with a faint, steady, flame. Lost in the gloom of his disordered thoughts Sarudine stared at it with glittering, feverish eyes. Amid the wild chaos of impressions and recollections there was one thing which stood out clearly from all others. It was the sense of his utter solitude that stabbed his heart like a dagger.
It pained him to hear the dead man spoken of thus. "Well I can understand why Sarudine did it," said Lialia, "but Soloveitchik? I never would have thought it possible! What was the reason?" "God knows!" replied Ivanoff. "He was always a bit queer." At that moment Riasantzeff drove up, and meeting Sina Karsavina on the doorstep, they came upstairs together.
Silly gossip!" he said to himself, refusing to believe that Lida, so fair, so proud, so unapproachable, Lida whom he so deeply loved, could possibly have scandalously compromised herself with such a creature as Sarudine whom he looked upon as infinitely inferior and more stupid than himself. Then wild, bestial jealousy took possession of his soul.
That big fellow, Schwartz, gave me a hiding, and knocked out one of my teeth. Nobody thought anything about it, but we shook hands afterwards, and became the best of friends. Nobody despised me then. Why should it be different now? Surely it is just the same thing! On that occasion, too, blood was spilt, and I fell down. So that ..." To these despairing questions Sarudine could find no answer.
At the same time he was rather glad that his pretty sister did not care for Novikoff. For some moments Lida remained motionless in the same place, and Sanine's curious gaze was riveted on her white silhouette in the moonlight. Sarudine now came from the lighted drawing-room on to the veranda. Sanine distinctly heard the faint jingling of his-spurs.
I'm just vegetating," said Sarudine with a mournful sigh. Volochine was silent, and looked up disdainfully at the ceiling where the green reflections from the garden wavered. "Our one and only amusement is this," continued Sarudine, as with a gesture he indicated the cards, the bottles, and his guests.
Word Of The Day