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She took a bottle of something out of the cupboard, went to the window, read the label, and went away. "Marya Leontyevna, those are not the drops!" Volodya heard a woman's voice, a minute later. "That's convallaria, and Lili wants morphine. Is your son asleep? Ask him to look for it. . . ." It was Nyuta's voice. Volodya turned cold.
And, having embraced the notary's neck, she whispered with her lips at his very ears, burning him with her hot breath: "Lock up this nastiness, my treasure! Let's go! .... Let's go! ..." And she was the first to go out into the dining room. "Come here, now, Volodya!" she cried out from there. "Come quicker! I want wine and after that love, love, love without end! ... No!
Volodya saw only a fat, plain face, distorted by an expression of repulsion, and he himself suddenly felt a loathing for what had happened. "I must go away, though," said Nyuta, looking at Volodya with disgust. "What a wretched, ugly . . . fie, ugly duckling!" How unseemly her long hair, her loose wrap, her steps, her voice seemed to Volodya now! . . .
Ellena Victorovna was leaning upon his arm. And suddenly she asked: "Tell me, Volodya, where do you usually go when you take leave of so-called decent women?" Volodya hemmed and hawed. However, he knew positively that he could not lie to Rovinskaya. "M-m-m ... I'm afraid of offending your hearing. To the Tzigani, for instance ... to night cabarets ..." "And somewhere else? Worse?"
Seeing that he was not prevented from holding her arm, Volodya glanced at Nyuta's laughing face, and clumsily, awkwardly, put both arms round her waist, his hands meeting behind her back.
"It doesn't seem long since the summer, when mamma was crying at your going . . . and here you are back again. . . . Time flies, my boy. Before you have time to cry out, old age is upon you. Mr. Lentilov, take some more, please help yourself! We don't stand on ceremony!" Lentilov was of the same height and age as Volodya, but not as round-faced and fair-skinned.
She had married him from interested motives, because, in the words of her school friends, he was madly rich, and because she was afraid of becoming an old maid like Rita, and because she was sick of her father, the doctor, and wanted to annoy Volodya.
"Really, you put me in an awkward position. From the time that I've become so madly in love with you ..." "Leave out the romancing!" "Well, how shall I say it?" murmured Volodya, feeling that he was turning red, not only in the face, but with his body, his back. "Well, of course, to the women. Now, of course, this does not occur with me personally ..."
But what was most humiliating in her position was that, since her wedding, Volodya had suddenly begun to pay her attention, which he had never done before, spending hours with her, sitting silent or chattering about trifles; and even now in the sledge, though he did not talk to her, he touched her foot with his and pressed her hand a little.
He has two children: Vanek, a large, dark-haired lad, whom one sees wandering about the village with a sullen look on his face, and Maroussya, a small and thin child, who is gradually fading away in the darkness of her cellar-like home. While strolling about one day, Volodya, impelled by his childish curiosity, decides, with two of his friends, to explore the chapel.
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