The Torrents Of Spring

Maria Nikolaevna suddenly turned to him. ‘And it’s not your pleasure
to know just what sort of woman I am? I can’t wonder at it, though,’ she
went on, leaning back again on the sofa cushions. ‘A man just going to be
married, and for love, and after a duel… . What thoughts could he have
for anything else?’
Maria Nikolaevna relapsed into dreamy silence, and began biting the
handle of her fan with her big, but even, milkwhite teeth.
And Sanin felt mounting to his head again that intoxication which he
had not been able to get rid of for the last two days.
The conversation between him and Maria Nikolaevna was carried on
in an undertone, almost in a whisper, and this irritated and disturbed
him the more… .
When would it all end?
Weak people never put an end to things themselves – they always wait
for the end.
Some one sneezed on the stage; this sneeze had been put into the play
by the author as the ‘comic relief’ or ‘element’; there was certainly no
other comic element in it; and the audience made the most of it; they
laughed.
This laugh, too, jarred upon Sanin.
There were moments when he actually did not know whether he was
furious or delighted, bored or amused. Oh, if Gemma could have seen
him!
‘It’s really curious,’ Maria Nikolaevna began all at once. ‘A man informs
one and in such a calm voice, “I am going to get married”; but no
one calmly says to one, “I’m going to throw myself in the water.” And
yet what difference is there? It’s curious, really.’
Annoyance got the upper hand of Sanin. ‘There’s a great difference,
Maria Nikolaevna! It’s not dreadful at all to throw oneself in the water if
one can swim; and besides … as to the strangeness of marriages, if you
come to that … ’
He stopped short abruptly and bit his tongue.
Maria Nikolaevna slapped her open hand with her fan.
‘Go on, Dimitri Pavlovitch, go on – I know what you were going to
say. “If it comes to that, my dear madam, Maria Nikolaevna Polozov,”
you were going to say, “anything more curious than your marriage it
would be impossible to conceive… . I know your husband well, from a
child!” That’s what you were going to say, you who can swim!’
‘Excuse me,’ Sanin was beginning… .
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