For a moment Lialia stood there irresolute, touching things nervously
on the table. Then she approached the door.
"Oh! what have I done!" thought Yourii, as, sincerely grieved, he
listened to the sound of her faltering footsteps. As she went towards
the other room, Lialia, doubting and distressed, felt as if she were
frozen. It seemed as though she were wandering in a dark wood. She
glanced at a mirror, and saw the reflection of her own rueful
countenance.
"He shall just see me looking like this!" she thought.
Riasantzeff was standing in the dining-room, saying in his remarkably
pleasant voice to Nicolai Yegorovitch; "Of course, it's rather strange, but quite harmless."
At the sound of his voice Lialia felt her heart throb violently, as if
it must break. When Riasantzeff saw her, he suddenly stopped talking
and came forward to meet her with outstretched arms. She alone knew
that this gesture signified his desire to embrace her.
Lialia looked up shyly at him, and her lips trembled. Without a word
she pulled her hand away, crossed the room and opened the glass door
leading to the balcony. Riasantzeff watched her, calmly, but with
slight astonishment.
"My Ludmilla Nicolaijevna is cross," he said to Nicolai Yegorovitch
with serio-comic gravity of manner. The latter burst out laughing.
"You had better go and make it up."
"There's nothing else to be done!" sighed Riasantzeff, in droll
fashion, as he followed Lialia on to the balcony.
It was still raining. The monotonous sound of falling drops filled the
air; but the sky seemed clearer now, and there was a break in the
clouds.
Lialia, her cheek propped against one of the cold, damp pillars of the
veranda, let the rain beat upon her bare head, so that her hair was wet
through.
"My princess is displeased ... Lialitschka!" said Riasantzeff, as he
drew her closer to him, and lightly kissed moist, fragrant hair.
At this touch, so intimate and familiar, something seemed to melt in
Lialia's breast, and without knowing what she did, she flung her arms
round her lover's strong neck as, amid a shower of kisses, she
murmured: "I am very, very angry with you! You're a bad man!"
All the while she kept thinking that after all there was nothing so
bad, or awful, or irreparable as she had supposed. What did it matter?
All that she wanted was to love and be loved by this big, handsome man.
Afterwards, at table, it was painful to her to notice Yourii's look of
amazement, and, when the chance came, she whispered to him, "It's awful
of me, I know!" at which he only smiled awkwardly. Yourii was really
pleased that the matter should have ended happily like this, while yet
affecting to despise such an attitude of bourgeois complacency and
toleration. He withdrew to his room, remaining there alone until the
evening, and as, before sunset, the sky grew clear, he took his gun,
intending to shoot in the same place where he and Riasantzeff had been
yesterday.