The Torrents Of Spring

XXXVI
Long after midnight the lamp was burning in Sanin’s room. He sat down
to the table and wrote to ‘his Gemma.’ He told her everything; he described
the Polozovs – husband and wife – but, more than all, enlarged
on his own feelings, and ended by appointing a meeting with her in
three days!!! (with three marks of exclamation). Early in the morning he
took this letter to the post, and went for a walk in the garden of the
Kurhaus, where music was already being played. There were few people
in it as yet; he stood before the arbour in which the orchestra was placed,
listened to an adaptation of airs from ‘Robert le Diable’, and after drinking
some coffee, turned into a solitary side walk, sat down on a bench,
and fell into a reverie. The handle of a parasol gave him a rapid, and
rather vigorous, thump on the shoulder. He started… . Before him in a
light, grey-green barége dress, in a white tulle hat, and suede gloves,
stood Maria Nikolaevna, fresh and rosy as a summer morning, though
the languor of sound unbroken sleep had not yet quite vanished from
her movements and her eyes.
‘Good-morning,’ she said. ‘I sent after you to-day, but you’d already
gone out. I’ve only just drunk my second glass – they’re making me
drink the water here, you know – whatever for, there’s no telling … am I
not healthy enough? And now I have to walk for a whole hour. Will you
be my companion? And then we’ll have some coffee.’
‘I’ve had some already,’ Sanin observed, getting up; ‘but I shall be very
glad to have a walk with you.’
‘Very well, give me your arm then; don’t be afraid: your betrothed is
not here – she won’t see you.’
Sanin gave a constrained smile. He experienced a disagreeable sensation
every time Maria Nikolaevna referred to Gemma. However, he
made haste to bend towards her obediently… . Maria Nikolaevna’s arm
slipped slowly and softly into his arm, and glided over it, and seemed to
cling tight to it.
‘Come – this way,’ she said to him, putting up her open parasol over
her shoulder. ‘I’m quite at home in this park; I will take you to the best
places. And do you know what? (she very often made use of this expression),
we won’t talk just now about that sale, we’ll have a thorough discussion
of that after lunch; but you must tell me now about yourself …
so that I may know whom I have to do with. And afterwards, if you like,
I will tell you about myself. Do you agree?’
‘But, Maria Nikolaevna, what interest can there be for you … ’
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