"No, it's a very good thing," replied Sanine.

"If a girl's got youth and good looks, what does she want with poetry, I should like to know?" observed Ivanoff.

"Never mind! Recite something, Sinotschka, do!" cried Lialia, amorous and tender.

Sina smiled, and looked away self-consciously before she began to recite in her clear, musical voice the following lines:

_Oh! love, my own true love, To thee I'll never tell it, Never to thee I'll tell my burning love!

But I will close these amorous eyes, And they shall guard my secret well.

Only by days of yearning is it known.

The calm blue nights, the golden stars, The dreaming woods that whisper in the night, These, yes, they know it, but are dumb; They will not show the mystery of my great love_.

Once more there was great enthusiasm, and they all loudly applauded Sina, not because her little poem was a good one, but because it was expressive of their mood, and because they were all longing for love and love's delicious sorrow.

"O Night, O Day! O l.u.s.trous eyes of Sina, I pray you tell me that it is I, the happy man!" cried Ivanoff ecstatically in a deep ba.s.s voice which startled them all.

"Well, I can a.s.sure you that it is not you," replied s.e.m.e.noff.

"Ah! woe is me!" wailed Ivanoff; and everybody laughed.

"Are my verses bad?" Sina asked Yourii.

He did not think that they had much originality, for they reminded him of hundreds of similar effusions. But Sina was so pretty and looked at him with those dark eyes of hers in such a pleading way that he gravely replied:

"I thought them quite charming and melodious."

Sina smiled, surprised that such praise could please her so much.

"Ah I you don't know my Sinotschka yet!" said Lialia, "she is all that is beautiful and melodious."

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Ivanoff.

"Yes, indeed I do!" persisted Lialia. "Her voice is beautiful and melodious, and so are her poems; she herself is a beauty; her name, even, is beautiful and melodious."

"Oh! my goodness! What more can you say than that!" cried Ivanoff. "But I am quite of your opinion."

At all these compliments Sina blushed with pleasure and confusion.

"It is time to go home," said Lida abruptly. She did not like to hear Sina praised, for she considered herself far prettier, cleverer, and more interesting.

"Are you going to sing something?" asked Sanine.

"No," she replied, "I am not in voice."

"It really is time to be going," observed Riasantzeff, for he remembered that early next morning he must be in the dissecting-room of the hospital. All the others wished that they could have stayed for a while. On their homeward way they were silent, feeling tired and contented. As before, though unseen, the tall stems of the gra.s.ses bent beneath the carriage-wheels, and the dust soon settled on the white road again. The bare grey fields looked vast and limitless in the faint light of the moon.

CHAPTER VII.

Three days afterwards, late in the evening, Lida came home sad, tired, and heavy-hearted. On reaching her room, she stood still, with hands clasped, and stared at the floor. She suddenly realized, to her horror, that in her relations with Sarudine she had gone too far. For the first time since that strange moment of irreparable weakness she perceived what a humiliating hold this empty-headed officer had over her, inferior as he was to herself in every way. She must now come if he called; she could no longer trifle with him as she liked, submitting to his kisses or laughingly resisting them. Now, like a slave, she must endure and obey.

How this had come about she could not comprehend. As always, she had ruled him, had borne with his amorous attentions; all had been as agreeable, amusing, and exciting, as heretofore. Then came a moment when her whole frame seemed on fire and her brain clouded as by a mist, annihilating all except the one mad desire to plunge into the abyss. It was as if the earth gave way beneath her feet; she lost control of her limbs, conscious only of two magnetic eyes that gazed boldly into hers.

Her whole being was thrilled and shaken with pa.s.sion; she became the sacrifice of overwhelming l.u.s.t; and yet she longed once more that such pa.s.sionate experiences might be repeated. At the very thought of it all Lida trembled; she raised her shoulders and hid her face in her hands.

With faltering steps she crossed the room and opened the window. For a long while she gazed at the moon that hung just above the garden, and in distant foliage a nightingale sang. Grief oppressed her. She felt strangely agitated by a sense of remorse and of wounded pride to think that she had ruined her life for a silly, shallow man, and that her false step had been foolish, base, and, indeed, accidental. The future seemed threatening; but she sought to dissipate her fears by obstinate bravado.

"Well, I did it, and there's an end of it!" she said to herself, frowning, and striving to find some sort of grim satisfaction from this hackneyed phrase. "What nonsense it all is! I wanted to do it and I did it; and I felt so happy--oh, so happy! It would have been silly not to enjoy myself when the moment came. I must not think of it; it can't be helped, now."

She languidly withdrew from the window and began to undress, letting her clothes slip from her on to the floor. "After all, one only lives once," she thought, shivering at the touch of the cool night air on her bare shoulders and arms. "What should I have gained by waiting till I was lawfully married? And of what good would that have been to me? It's all the same thing! What is there to worry about?"

All at once it seemed to her that in this hazard she had got all that was best and most interesting; and that now, free as a bird an eventful life of happiness and pleasure lay before her.

"I'll love if I will; if I don't, then I won't!" sang Lida softly to herself, thinking meanwhile that her voice was a much better one than Sina Karsavina's. "Oh! it's all nonsense! If I like, I'll give myself to the devil!" Thus she made sudden answer to her thoughts, holding her bare arms above her head so that her bosom shook.

"Aren't you asleep yet, Lida?" said Sanine's voice outside the window.

Lida started back in alarm, and then, with a smile, flung a shawl round her shoulders as she approached the window.

"What a fright you gave me!" she said.

Sanine came nearer and leant with both elbows on the window-sill. His eyes shone, and he smiled.

"There was no need for that!" he muttered playfully.

Lida looked round.

"Without a shawl you looked much nicer," he said in a low voice, impressively.

Lida looked at him in amazement, and instinctively drew the shawl tighter round her.

Sanine laughed. In confusion, she also leant upon the window-sill, and now she felt his breath on her cheek.

"What a beauty you are!" he said.

Lida glanced swiftly at him, fearful of what she thought she could read in his face. With her whole body she felt that her brother's eyes were fixed upon her, and she turned away in horror. It was so terrible, so loathsome, that her heart seemed frozen. Every man looked at her just like that, and she liked it, but for her brother to do so was incredible, impossible. Recovering herself, she said, smiling:

"Yes, I know."

Sanine calmly watched her. The shawl and her chemise had slipped when she leant on the window-sill, and partly disclosed her tender bosom, white in the moonlight.

"Men always build up a Wall of China between themselves and happiness,"

he said in a low, trembling voice. Lida was terrified.

"How do you mean?" she asked faintly, her eyes still fixed on the garden for fear of encountering his. To her it seemed that something was going to happen of which one hardly dared to think. Yet she had no doubt as to what it was. It was awful, hideous, and yet interesting.

Her brain was on fire; she could scarcely see, as with horror and yet with curiosity she felt hot breath against her cheek that stirred her hair and sent shivers through her frame.