Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 5, 2025
She had on a light, elegant dress of a pale cream colour trimmed with lace, and in her hand she had the old familiar parasol. Yartsev greeted her and went on to the villa from which came the sound of Sasha's and Lida's voices, while Laptev sat down beside her to talk of business matters. "Why is it you haven't been for so long?" she said, keeping his hand in hers.
The argument was over and Yartsev was speaking in the tones of a professor giving a lecture: "Owing to differences of climate, of energy, of tastes, of age, equality among men is physically impossible. But civilised man can make this inequality innocuous, as he has already done with bogs and bears.
Two candles were burning by some open music on the piano. On the sofa lay Polina Razsudin wearing a black dress and a sash, with a newspaper in her hand, fast asleep. She must have been playing late, waiting for Yartsev to come home, and, tired of waiting, fell asleep. "Hullo, she's worn out," he thought. Carefully taking the newspaper out of her hands, he covered her with a rug.
He was positively glad that he was treated so ungraciously, that he was scorned, that he was a stupid, dull husband, a money-bag; and it seemed to him, that he would have been even more glad if his wife were to deceive him that night with his best friend, and were afterwards to acknowledge it, looking at him with hatred. . . . He was jealous on her account of their student friends, of actors, of singers, of Yartsev, even of casual acquaintances; and now he had a passionate longing for her really to be unfaithful to him.
Arriving one day at Yartsev's, Laptev found no one there but Polina, who was sitting at the piano practising her exercises. She looked at him with a cold, almost hostile expression, and asked without shaking hands: "Tell me, please: how much longer is this going on?" "This? What?" asked Laptev, not understanding. "You come here every day and hinder Yartsev from working.
How she looks at me when I'm nursing her! How she laughs! She's only eight months old, but, upon my word, I've never seen such intelligent eyes in a child of three." "Tell me, by the way," asked Yartsev: "which do you love most your husband or your baby?" Yulia shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know," she said. "I never was so very fond of my husband, and Olga is in reality my first love.
After this friendly talk, which was not over till midnight, Laptev took to coming to see Yartsev almost every day. He felt drawn to him. As a rule he came towards evening, lay down on the sofa, and waited patiently for Yartsev to come in, without feeling in the least bored.
Yulia and Yartsev were lying on the grass at Sokolniki not far from the embankment of the Yaroslav railway; a little distance away Kotchevoy was lying with hands under his head, looking at the sky. All three had been for a walk, and were waiting for the six o'clock train to pass to go home to tea. "Mothers see something extraordinary in their children, that is ordained by nature," said Yulia.
They are wonderful children!" Yartsev went to the piano and struck a chord. "I'm a chemist, I think in chemical terms, and I shall die a chemist," he went on.
In short, man's never satisfied with what he has." He went into the drawing-room and began singing as though nothing had happened, and Laptev sat in his study with his eyes shut, and tried to understand why Polina had gone to live with Yartsev. And then he felt sad that there were no lasting, permanent attachments.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking