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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

in every limb, unable to collect her thoughts, and the sound of

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

tears, but feeling miserable, humiliated, and unhappy. She wept because

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

them and for herself the more would they despise her.

"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.

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