The Torrents Of Spring

XXXI
Sanin woke up very early. He found himself at the highest pinnacle of
human happiness; but it was not that prevented him from sleeping; the
question, the vital, fateful question – how he could dispose of his estate
as quickly and as advantageously as possible – disturbed his rest. The
most diverse plans were mixed up in his head, but nothing had as yet
come out clearly. He went out of the house to get air and freshen himself.
He wanted to present himself to Gemma with a project ready prepared
and not without.
What was the figure, somewhat ponderous and thick in the legs, but
well-dressed, walking in front of him, with a slight roll and waddle in
his gait? Where had he seen that head, covered with tufts of flaxen hair,
and as it were set right into the shoulders, that soft cushiony back, those
plump arms hanging straight down at his sides? Could it be Polozov, his
old schoolfellow, whom he had lost sight of for the last five years? Sanin
overtook the figure walking in front of him, turned round… . A broad,
yellowish face, little pig’s eyes, with white lashes and eyebrows, a short
flat nose, thick lips that looked glued together, a round smooth chin, and
that expression, sour, sluggish, and mistrustful – yes; it was he, it was Ippolit
Polozov!
‘Isn’t my lucky star working for me again?’ flashed through Sanin’s
mind.
‘Polozov! Ippolit Sidorovitch! Is it you?’
The figure stopped, raised his diminutive eyes, waited a little, and ungluing
his lips at last, brought out in a rather hoarse falsetto, ‘Dimitri
Sanin?’
‘That’s me!’ cried Sanin, and he shook one of Polozov’s hands; arrayed
in tight kid-gloves of an ashen-grey colour, they hung as lifeless as before
beside his barrel-shaped legs. ‘Have you been here long? Where
have you come from? Where are you stopping?’
‘I came yesterday from Wiesbaden,’ Polozov replied in deliberate
tones, ‘to do some shopping for my wife, and I’m going back to
Wiesbaden to-day.’
‘Oh, yes! You’re married, to be sure, and they say, to such a beauty!’
Polozov turned his eyes away. ‘Yes, they say so.’
Sanin laughed. ‘I see you’re just the same … as phlegmatic as you
were at school.’
‘Why should I be different?’
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