The Torrents Of Spring

eing 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.
‘Oh, this is a treat, a real treat! That was the only thing wanting!’ The
dull rumble was heard a second time, rose, and fell in a crash. ‘Bravo!
Bis! Do you remember I spoke of the Æneid yesterday? They too were
overtaken by a storm in the forest, you know. We must be off, though.’
She rose swiftly to her feet. ‘Bring me my horse… . Give me your hand.
There, so. I’m not heavy.’
She hopped like a bird into the saddle. Sanin too mounted his horse.
‘Are you going home?’ he asked in an unsteady voice.
‘Home indeed!’ she answered deliberately and picked up the reins.
‘Follow me,’ she commanded almost roughly. She came out on to the
road and passing the red cross, rode down into a hollow, clambered up
again to a cross road, turned to the right and again up the mountainside…
. She obviously knew where the path led, and the path led farther
and farther into the heart of the forest. She said nothing and did not look
round; she moved imperiously in front and humbly and submissively he
followed without a spark of will in his sinking heart. Rain began to fall in
spots. She quickened her horse’s pace, and he did not linger behind her.
At last through the dark green of the young firs under an overhanging
grey rock, a tumbledown little hut peeped out at him, with a low door in
its wattle wall… . Maria Nikolaevna made her mare push through the fir
bushes, leaped off her, and appearing suddenly at the entrance to the
hut, turned to Sanin, and whispered ‘Æneas.’
Four hours later, Maria Nikolaevna and Sanin, accompanied by the
groom, who was nodding in the saddle, returned to Wiesbaden, to the
hotel. Polozov met his wife with the letter to the overseer in his hand.
After staring rather intently at her, he showed signs of some displeasure
on his face, and even muttered, ‘You don’t mean to say you’ve won your
bet?’
Maria Nikolaevna simply shrugged her shoulders.
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