Sanine

Lida did not go home, but hurriedly turned her steps in an opposite

direction. The streets were empty, the air stifling. Close to the wall

and fence lay the short shadows, vanquished by the triumphant sun.

Through mere force of habit, Lida opened her parasol. She never noticed

if it was cold or hot, light or dark. She walked swiftly past the

fences all dusty and overgrown with weeds, her head bowed, her eyes

downcast. Now and again she met a few gasping pedestrians half-

suffocated by the heat. Over the town lay silence, the oppressive

silence of a summer afternoon.

A little white puppy had followed Lida. After eagerly sniffing her

dress, it ran on in front, and, looking round, wagged its tail, as if

to say that they were comrades. At the corner of a street stood a funny

little fat boy, a portion of whose shirt peeped out at the back of his

breeches. With cheeks distended and fruit-stained, he was vigorously

blowing a wooden pipe.

Lida beckoned to the little puppy and smiled at the boy. Yet she did so

almost unconsciously; her soul was imprisoned. An obscure force,

separating her from the world, swept her onward, past the sunlight, the

verdure, and all the joy of life, towards a black gulf that by the dull

anguish within her she knew to be near.

An officer of her acquaintance rode by. On seeing Lida he reined in his

horse, a roan, whose glossy coat shone in the sunlight.

"Lidia Petrovna!" he cried, in a pleasant, cheery voice, "Where are you

going in all this heat?"

Mechanically her eyes glanced at his forage-cap, jauntily poised on his

moist, sunburnt brow. She did not speak, but merely smiled her

habitual, coquettish smile.

At that moment, ignorant herself as to what might happen, she echoed

his question: "Ah! where, indeed?"

She no longer felt angry with Sarudine. Hardly knowing why she had gone

to him, for it seemed impossible to live without him, or bear her grief

alone. Yet it was as if he had just vanished from her life. The past

was dead. That which remained concerned her alone; and as to that she

alone could decide.

Her brain worked with feverish haste, her thoughts being yet clear and

plain. The most dreadful thing was, that the proud, handsome Lida would

disappear, and in her stead there would be a wretched being,

persecuted, besmirched, defenceless. Pride and beauty must be retained.

Therefore, she must go, she must get away to some place where the mud

could not touch her. This fact clearly established, Lida suddenly

imagined herself encircled by a void; life, sunlight, human beings, no

longer existed; she was alone in their midst, absolutely alone. There

was no escape; she must die, she must drown herself. In a moment this

became such a certainty that it was as if round her a wall of stone had

arisen to shut her off from all that had been, and from all that might

be.