The Torrents Of Spring

‘Dimitri.’
‘And your father’s?’
‘Pavlovitch.’
‘Do you know,’ Maria Nikolaevna said, still in the same drawling
voice, ‘I like you very much, Dimitri Pavlovitch. You must be an excellent
fellow. Give me your hand. Let us be friends.’
She pressed his hand tightly in her beautiful, white, strong fingers.
Her hand was a little smaller than his hand, but much warmer and
smoother and whiter and more full of life.
‘Only, do you know what strikes me?’
‘What?’
‘You won’t be angry? No? You say she is betrothed to you. But was
that … was that quite necessary?’
Sanin frowned. ‘I don’t understand you, Maria Nikolaevna.’
Maria Nikolaevna gave a soft low laugh, and shaking her head tossed
back the hair that was falling on her cheeks. ‘Decidedly – he’s delightful,’
she commented half pensively, half carelessly. ‘A perfect knight! After
that, there’s no believing in the people who maintain that the race of
idealists is extinct!’
Maria Nikolaevna talked Russian all the time, an astonishingly pure
true Moscow Russian, such as the people, not the nobles speak.
‘You’ve been brought up at home, I expect, in a God-fearing, old orthodox
family?’ she queried. ‘You’re from what province?’
‘Tula.’
‘Oh! so we’re from the same part. My father … I daresay you know
who my father was?’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘He was born in Tula… . He was a Tula man. Well … well. Come, let
us get to business now.’
‘That is … how come to business? What do you mean to say by that?’
Maria Nikolaevna half-closed her eyes. ‘Why, what did you come here
for?’ (when she screwed up her eyes, their expression became very
kindly and a little bantering, when she opened them wide, into their
clear, almost cold brilliancy, there came something-ill-natured …
something menacing. Her eyes gained a peculiar beauty from her eyebrows,
which were thick, and met in the centre, and had the smoothness
of sable fur). ‘Don’t you want me to buy your estate? You want money
for your nuptials? Don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And do you want much?’
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