The Torrents Of Spring

‘Yes, Dimitri Pavlovitch,’ she said, and in her voice there was a note of
something special, a sort of unmistakable sincerity and gravity,
‘freedom, more than all and before all. And don’t imagine I am boasting
of this – there is nothing praiseworthy in it; only it’s so and always will
be so with me to the day of my death. I suppose it must have been that I
saw a great deal of slavery in my childhood and suffered enough from it.
Yes, and Monsieur Gaston, my tutor, opened my eyes too. Now you can,
perhaps, understand why I married Ippolit Sidoritch: with him I’m free,
perfectly free as air, as the wind… . And I knew that before marriage; I
knew that with him I should be a free Cossack!’
Maria Nikolaevna paused and flung her fan aside.
‘I will tell you one thing more; I have no distaste for reflection … it’s
amusing, and indeed our brains are given us for that; but on the consequences
of what I do I never reflect, and if I suffer I don’t pity myself –
not a little bit; it’s not worth it. I have a favourite saying: Cela ne tire pas à
conséquence, – I don’t know how to say that in Russian. And after all,
what does tire à consequence? I shan’t be asked to give an account of myself
here, you see – in this world; and up there (she pointed upwards
with her finger), well, up there – let them manage as best they can. When
they come to judge me up there, I shall not be I! Are you listening to me?
Aren’t you bored?’
Sanin was sitting bent up. He raised his head. ‘I’m not at all bored,
Maria Nikolaevna, and I am listening to you with curiosity. Only I …
confess … I wonder why you say all this to me?’
Maria Nikolaevna edged a little away on the sofa.
‘You wonder?… Are you slow to guess? Or so modest?’
Sanin lifted his head higher than before.
‘I tell you all this,’ Maria Nikolaevna continued in an unmoved tone,
which did not, however, at all correspond with the expression of her
face, ‘because I like you very much; yes, don’t be surprised, I’m not joking;
because since I have met you, it would be painful to me that you had
a disagreeable recollection of me … not disagreeable even, that I
shouldn’t mind, but untrue. That’s why I have made you come here, and
am staying alone with you and talking to you so openly… . Yes, yes,
openly. I’m not telling a lie. And observe, Dimitri Pavlovitch, I know
you’re in love with another woman, that you’re going to be married to
her… . Do justice to my disinterestedness! Though indeed it’s a good opportunity
for you to say in your turn: Cela ne tire pas à conséquence!’
She laughed, but her laugh suddenly broke off, and she stayed motionless,
as though her own words had suddenly struck her, and in her
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