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Updated: June 23, 2025
"I have told you everything. How is it you have not understood? Drink up your tea." "Tell me again," he pleaded. "Take your tea first; pour out the rum. I repeat I have already told you all. You remember about the mice? Did you not understand that?" Kseniya Ippolytovna sat erect in her chair; she spoke coldly, in the same distant tone in which she had addressed the butler.
At night we sit in restaurants, drinking wine and listening to garish music. We love but are childless.... And you? You live a sober, righteous and sensible life, seeking the truth.... Isn't that so? Truth!" Her cry was malignant and full of derision. "That is unjust, Kseniya," answered Polunin in a low voice, hanging his head.
At midnight, just as they were expecting the clock to chime, Kseniya Ippolytovna rose to propose a toast; in her right hand was a glass; her left was flung back behind her plaited hair; she held her head high. All the guests at once rose to their feet. "I am a woman," she cried aloud. "I drink to ourselves, to women, to the gentle, to the homely, to happiness and purity! To motherhood!
Dmitri Vladimirovich, is that you?" cried a woman's muffled voice: it sounded a great way off through the instrument. "Yes, but who is speaking?" "Kseniya Ippolytovna Enisherlova is speaking", the voice answered quietly; then added in a higher key: "Is it you, my ascetic and seeker? This is me, me, Kseniya." "You, Kseniya Ippolytovna?" Polunin exclaimed joyfully.
The men went to the buffets to drink, the older ones then sat in the drawing-room playing whist, and talked. It was nearly five o'clock when the guests departed. Only the Arkhipovs and Polunin remained. Kseniya Ippolytovna ordered coffee, and all four sat down at a small table feeling worn out. The house was now wrapt in silence. The dawn had just broken.
Kseniya looked up at him with a wan smile: "It is all right there is no need to go... It was only my nonsense.... I was merely venting my anger.... Don't mind me .... I am tired and harassed. Of course I have not been purged. I know that is impossible... We are the 'heisha-girls of lantern-light'.... You remember Annensky? ... Give me your hand."
Kseniya Ippolytovna laughed: "I have already said everything! Isn't it cold? I have not been out to-day. I have been thinking about Paris and of that ... that June.... Tea should be ready by this time!" She rose and rung the bell, and the old butler came in. "Will tea be long?" "I will bring it now, Barina."
But the rays died away immediately, leaving a blue crepuscular gloom, in which Kseniya Ippolytovna's figure grew dim, forlorn, and decrepit. Alena curtseyed: Kseniya Ippolytovna hesitated a moment, wondering if she should give her hand; then she went up to Alena and kissed her. "Good evening", she cried gaily, "you know I am an old friend of your husband's."
They entered the study and sat down on the sofa. Outside the windows lay the snow, blue like the glow within. The walls and the furniture grew dim in the twilight. Polunin grave and attentive hovered solicitously round his guest. Alena withdrew, casting a long, steadfast look at her husband. "I have come here straight from Paris", Kseniya explained.
In the holidays they drove about together in droskies, and told fortunes: Kseniya Ippolytovna was presented with a waxen cradle. They drove to town with some mummers, and attended an amateur performance in a club. Polunin dressed up as a wood-spirit, Kseniya as a wood- spirit's daughter out of a birch-grove. Then they visited the neighbouring landowners.
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