Sanine
Page 44"Why, like this!" replied Sanine, and his voice faltered.
As if by an electric shock, Lida started backwards and, without knowing
what she did, leant over the table and blew out the light.
"It is bed-time," she said, and shut the window.
The light having been extinguished, it seemed less dark out of doors,
and Sanine's figure was clearly discernible, his features appearing
blueish in the moonlight. He stood in the long, dew-drenched grass and
smiled.
Lida left the window and sat down mechanically on her bed. She trembled
Sanine's footsteps on the grass outside set her heart beating
violently.
"Am I going mad?" she asked herself in disgust. "How awful! A chance
phrase like that to put such thoughts into my head! Is this erotomania?
Am I really so bad, so depraved? I must have sunk very low to think of
such a thing!"
Burying her face in the pillows, she wept bitterly.
"Why am I weeping?" she thought, not knowing the reason for such
she had yielded herself to Sarudine, because she was no longer a proud,
pure maiden, and because of that insulting, horrible look in her
brother's eyes. Formerly he would never have looked at her like that.
It was, so she thought, because she had fallen.
But the bitterest, most harassing thought of all was that she had now
become a woman, and that as long as she was young, strong, and good-
looking her best powers must be at the service of men and devoted to
their gratification, while the greater the enjoyment she procured for
"Why should they? Who gave them this right? Am I not free just as much
as they are?" she asked herself, as she gazed into the dreary darkness
of her room. "Shall I never get to know another, better life?"
Her whole youthful physique imperiously told her that she had a right
to take from life all that was interesting, pleasurable and necessary
to her; and that she had a right to do whatever she chose with her
strong, beautiful body that belonged to her alone. But this idea was
lost in a tangle of confused and conflicting thoughts.