The Torrents Of Spring

eyes, usually so gay and bold, there was a gleam of something like timidity,
even like sadness.
‘Snake! ah, she’s a snake!’ Sanin was thinking meanwhile; ‘but what a
lovely snake!’
‘Give me my opera-glass,’ Maria Nikolaevna said suddenly. ‘I want to
see whether this jeune première really is so ugly. Upon my word, one
might fancy the government appointed her in the interests of morality,
so that the young men might not lose their heads over her.’
Sanin handed her the opera-glass, and as she took it from him, swiftly,
but hardly audibly, she snatched his hand in both of hers.
‘Please don’t be serious,’ she whispered with a smile. ‘Do you know
what, no one can put fetters on me, but then you see I put no fetters on
others. I love freedom, and I don’t acknowledge duties – not only for
myself. Now move to one side a little, and let us listen to the play.’
Maria Nikolaevna turned her opera-glass upon the stage, and Sanin
proceeded to look in the same direction, sitting beside her in the half
dark of the box, and involuntarily drinking in the warmth and fragrance
of her luxurious body, and as involuntarily turning over and over in his
head all she had said during the evening – especially during the last
minutes.
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