'But, Maria Nikolaevna, what interest can there be for you ...'
'Stop, stop. You don't understand me. I don't want to flirt with you.' Maria Nikolaevna shrugged her shoulders. 'He's got a betrothed like an antique statue, is it likely I am going to flirt with him? But you've something to sell, and I'm the purchaser. I want to know what your goods are like. Well, of course, you must show what they are like. I don't only want to know what I'm buying, but whom I'm buying from. That was my father's rule. Come, begin ... come, if not from childhood--come now, have you been long abroad? And where have you been up till now? Only don't walk so fast, we're in no hurry.'
'I came here from Italy, where I spent several months.'
'Ah, you feel, it seems, a special attraction towards everything Italian. It's strange you didn't find your lady-love there. Are you fond of art? of pictures? or more of music?'
'I am fond of art.... I like everything beautiful.'
'And music?'
'I like music too.'
'Well, I don't at all. I don't care for anything but Russian songs--and that in the country and in the spring--with dancing, you know ... red shirts, wreaths of beads, the young grass in the meadows, the smell of smoke ... delicious! But we weren't talking of me. Go on, tell me.'
Maria Nikolaevna walked on, and kept looking at Sanin. She was tall--her face was almost on a level with his face.
He began to talk--at first reluctantly, unskilfully--but afterwards he talked more freely, chattered away in fact. Maria Nikolaevna was a very good listener; and moreover she seemed herself so frank, that she led others unconsciously on to frankness. She possessed that great gift of 'intimateness'--le terrible don de la familiarité--to which Cardinal Retz refers. Sanin talked of his travels, of his life in Petersburg, of his youth.... Had Maria Nikolaevna been a lady of fashion, with refined manners, he would never have opened out so; but she herself spoke of herself as a 'good fellow,' who had no patience with ceremony of any sort; it was in those words that she characterised herself to Sanin. And at the same time this 'good fellow' walked by his side with feline grace, slightly bending towards him, and peeping into his face; and this 'good fellow' walked in the form of a young feminine creature, full of the tormenting, fiery, soft and seductive charm, of which--for the undoing of us poor weak sinful men--only Slav natures are possessed, and but few of them, and those never of pure Slav blood, with no foreign alloy. Sanin's walk with Maria Nikolaevna, Sanin's talk with Maria Nikolaevna lasted over an hour. And they did not stop once; they kept walking about the endless avenues of the park, now mounting a hill and admiring the view as they went, and now going down into the valley, and getting hidden in the thick shadows,--and all the while arm-in-arm. At times Sanin felt positively irritated; he had never walked so long with Gemma, his darling Gemma ... but this lady had simply taken possession of him, and there was no escape! 'Aren't you tired?' he said to her more than once. 'I never get tired,' she answered. Now and then they met other people walking in the park; almost all of them bowed--some respectfully, others even cringingly. To one of them, a very handsome, fashionably dressed dark man, she called from a distance with the best Parisian accent, 'Comte, vous savez, il ne faut pas venir me voir--ni aujourd'hui ni demain.' The man took off his hat, without speaking, and dropped a low bow.