'Stop!' cried Maria Nikolaevna, 'I want to sit down and rest on this velvet. Help me to get off.'
Sanin leaped off his horse and ran up to her. She leaned on both his shoulders, sprang instantly to the ground, and seated herself on one of the mossy mounds. He stood before her, holding both the horses' bridles in his hand.
She lifted her eyes to him.... 'Sanin, are you able to forget?'
Sanin recollected what had happened yesterday ... in the carriage. 'What is that--a question ... or a reproach?'
'I have never in my life reproached any one for anything. Do you believe in magic?'
'What?'
'In magic?--you know what is sung of in our ballads--our Russian peasant ballads?'
'Ah! That's what you're speaking of,' Sanin said slowly.
'Yes, that's it. I believe in it ... and you will believe in it.'
'Magic is sorcery ...' Sanin repeated, 'Anything in the world is possible. I used not to believe in it--but I do now. I don't know myself.'
Maria Nikolaevna thought a moment and looked about her. 'I fancy this place seems familiar to me. Look, Sanin, behind that bushy oak--is there a red wooden cross, or not?'
Sanin moved a few steps to one side. 'Yes, there is.' Maria Nikolaevna smiled. 'Ah, that's good! I know where we are. We haven't got lost as yet. What's that tapping? A wood-cutter?'
Sanin looked into the thicket. 'Yes ... there's a man there chopping up dry branches.'
'I must put my hair to rights,' said Maria Nikolaevna. 'Else he'll see me and be shocked.' She took off her hat and began plaiting up her long hair, silently and seriously. Sanin stood facing her ... All the lines of her graceful limbs could be clearly seen through the dark folds of her habit, dotted here and there with tufts of moss.
One of the horses suddenly shook itself behind Sanin's back; he himself started and trembled from head to foot. Everything was in confusion within him, his nerves were strung up like harpstrings. He might well say he did not know himself.... He really was bewitched. His whole being was filled full of one thing ... one idea, one desire. Maria Nikolaevna turned a keen look upon him.
'Come, now everything's as it should be,' she observed, putting on her hat. 'Won't you sit down? Here! No, wait a minute ... don't sit down! What's that?'
Over the tree-tops, over the air of the forest, rolled a dull rumbling.
'Can it be thunder?'
'I think it really is thunder,' answered Sanin.