Gaguine's story relieved me greatly.

IX.

Annouchka came to meet us at the threshold of the door. I was expecting a fresh burst of laughter, but she approached us pale, silent, her eyes cast down.

"I have brought him back," said Gaguine, "and it is well to add that he wished to come himself."

She looked at me with a questioning air. I put my hand out to her this time, and pressed with fervor her cold and trembling fingers. I felt a profound pity for her. I understood, indeed, the sides of her character which had appeared inexplicable to me. That agitation one saw in her, that desire of putting herself forward, joined with the fear of appearing ridiculous, was quite clear to me now.

A weighty secret oppressed her constantly, her inexperienced _amour propre_ came forward and receded incessantly, but her whole being sought the truth. I understood what attracted me towards this strange young girl: it was not only the half-savage charm bestowed upon her lovely and graceful young figure, it was also her soul that captivated me.

Gaguine began to rummage over his portfolios; I proposed to Annouchka to accompany me into the vineyard. She immediately consented, with a gay and almost submissive air. We went half way down the mountain, and seated ourselves upon a stone.

"And you were not dull without us?" she asked me.

"You were then dull without me?" I replied to her.

Annouchka looked at me slyly.

"Yes!" she said, and almost immediately began,--

"The mountains must be very beautiful. They are high, higher than the clouds. Tell me what you saw. You have already told my brother, but I have not heard."

"But you did not care to hear, since you went out."

"I went out because,--you see very well that I don't go out now," added she in a tender tone; "but this morning you were angry."

"I was angry?"

"Yes!"

"Come now, why should I have been?"

"I don't know; but you were angry, and went away in the same mood. I was very sorry to see you go away so, and I am glad to see you come back."

"And I am very glad to be back," I answered.

Annouchka shrugged her shoulders, as children do when they are pleased.

"Oh! I know it," she replied. "I used to know by the way in which my father coughed whether he was pleased with me or not."

It was the first time that she had spoken of her father; it surprised me.

"You loved your father very much?" I asked her; and suddenly, to my great disgust, I felt that I blushed.

She did not answer, and blushed also.

We kept silent for some time. In the distance the smoke of a steamboat rose up on the Rhine; we followed it with our eyes.

"And your story," she said to me in a low voice.

"Why did you sometimes begin to laugh when you saw me?" I asked her.

"I don't know. Sometimes I feel like weeping, and I begin to laugh. You must not judge of me by the way I act. Apropos, what is that legend about the fairy Lorelei? This is her rock that one sees here. They say that formerly she drowned everybody, until, falling in love, she threw herself into the Rhine. I like the story. Dame Louise knows a great many of them; she tells them all to me. Dame Louise has a black cat with yellow eyes."

Annouchka raised her head and shook her curls.

"Ah! how happy I am," she said. At that moment low, monotonous sounds began to be heard at intervals,--hundreds of voices, chanting in chorus, with cadenced interruptions, a religious song. A long procession appeared on the road below us, with crosses and banners.

"Suppose we join them," Annouchka said to me, listening to the chants that came to us growing fainter and fainter by degrees.

"You are then very religious?"

"One should go to some place very far away for devotion, or to accomplish a perilous work!" she added. "Otherwise the days slip by--life pa.s.ses uselessly."

"You are ambitious," I said to her. "You do not wish to end your life without leaving behind some traces of your existence?"

"Is it then impossible?"

"Impossible!" I was going to answer; but I looked at the eyes that shone with ardor, and confined myself to saying, "Try!"

"Tell me," after a moment's silence, during which indescribable shades pa.s.sed over her countenance, which again had become pale. "Then that lady pleases you very much? You know, the one whose health my brother drank at the ruins the day after you met us?"

I began to laugh.

"Your brother but jested; no woman was in my mind, or at least is there now."

"And what is it that you like about women?" she asked, turning her head with a childlike curiosity.

"What a singular question!" I cried.

Annouchka was immediately troubled.

"I shouldn't have asked you such a question, should I? Forgive me; I am accustomed to say whatever comes into my head. That is why I am afraid to speak."

"Speak, I beg you! Fear nothing, I am so delighted at seeing you less wild."

Annouchka lowered her eyes, and for the first time I heard a sweet low laugh come from her lips.

"Come, tell me about your trip," she said, arranging the folds of her dress over her knees, as if to install herself there for a long time; "begin or recite something to me, that which you read from Oneguine."[4]

[Footnote 4: Poem of Pouchkina.]

She suddenly became pensive, and murmured in a low voice,--

"Ou sont aujourd'hui la croix et l'ombrage Qui marquaient la tombe de ma pauvre mere."