"Well, if you what?" asked Sanine loudly, and his eyes shone. "I can
but tell you this, that there is not and there never has been anything
between Lida and Sarudine."
Novikoff looked at him in amazement.
"I ... well ... I thought ..." he began, feeling, to his dismay, that
he could no longer believe what Sanine said.
"You thought a lot of nonsense!" replied Sanine sharply. "You ought to
know Lida better than that. What sort of love can there be with all
that hesitation and shilly-shallying?"
Novikoff, overjoyed, grasped the other's hand.
Then, suddenly Sanine's face wore a furious expression as he closely
watched the effect of his words upon his companion.
Novikoff showed obvious pleasure at the thought of the woman he desired
being immaculate. Into those honest sorrowful eyes, there came a look
of animal jealousy and concupiscence.
"Oho!" exclaimed Sanine threateningly, as he got up. "Then what I have
to tell you is this: Lida has not only fallen in love with Sarudine,
but she has also had illicit relations with him, and is now
enceinte."
There was dead silence in the room. Novikoff smiled a strange, sickly
smile and rubbed his hands. From his trembling lips there issued a
faint cry. Sanine stood over him, looking straight into his eyes. The
wrinkled corners of his mouth showed suppressed anger.
"Well, why don't you speak?" he asked.
Novikoff looked up for a moment, but instantly avoided the other's
glance, his features being still distorted by a vacuous smile.
"Lida has just gone through a terrible ordeal," said Sanine in a low
voice, as if soliloquising. If I had not chanced to overtake her, she
would not be living now, and what yesterday was a healthful, handsome
girl would now be lying in the river-mud, a bloated corpse, devoured by
crabs. The question is not one of her death--we must each of us die
some day--yet how sad to think that with her all the brightness and joy
created for others by her personality would also have perished. Of
course, Lida is not the only one in all the world; but, my God! if
there were no girlish loveliness left, it would be as sad and gloomy as
the grave.
"For my part, I am eager to commit murder when I see a poor girl
brought to ruin in this senseless way. Personally, it is a matter of
utter indifference to me whether you marry Lida or go to the devil, but
I must tell you that you are an idiot. If you had got one sound idea in
your head, would you worry yourself and others so much merely because a
young woman, free to pick and choose, had become the mistress of a man
who was unworthy of her, and by following her sexual impulse had
achieved her own complete development? Nor are you the only idiot, let
me tell you. There are millions of your sort who make life into a
prison, without sunshine or warmth! How often have you given rein to
your lust in company with some harlot, the sharer of your sordid
debauch? In Lida's case it was passion, the poetry of youth, and
strength, and beauty. By what right, then, do you shrink from her, you
that call yourself an intelligent, sensible man? What has her past to
do with you? Is she less beautiful? Or less fitted for loving, or for
being loved? Is it that you yourself wanted to be the first to possess
her? Now then, speak!"