'One may die from something else than a dagger,' observed Sanin.
'All that's moonshine! Are you superstitious? I'm not a bit. What is to be, will be. Monsieur Gaston used to live in our house, in the room over my head. Sometimes I'd wake up at night and hear his footstep--he used to go to bed very late--and my heart would stand still with veneration, or some other feeling. My father could hardly read and write himself, but he gave us an excellent education. Do you know, I learnt Latin!'
'You? learnt Latin?'
'Yes; I did. Monsieur Gaston taught me. I read the Æneid with him. It's a dull thing, but there are fine passages. Do you remember when Dido and Æneas are in the forest?...'
'Yes, yes, I remember,' Sanin answered hurriedly. He had long ago forgotten all his Latin, and had only very faint notions about the Æneid.
Maria Nikolaevna glanced at him, as her way was, a little from one side and looking upwards. 'Don't imagine, though, that I am very learned. Mercy on us! no; I'm not learned, and I've no talents of any sort. I scarcely know how to write ... really; I can't read aloud; nor play the piano, nor draw, nor sew--nothing! That's what I am--there you have me!'
She threw out her hands. 'I tell you all this,' she said, 'first, so as not to hear those fools (she pointed to the stage where at that instant the actor's place was being filled by an actress, also howling, and also with her elbows projecting before her) and secondly, because I'm in your debt; you told me all about yourself yesterday.'
'It was your pleasure to question me,' observed Sanin.
Maria Nikolaevna suddenly turned to him. 'And it's not your pleasure to know just what sort of woman I am? I can't wonder at it, though,' she went on, leaning back again on the sofa cushions. 'A man just going to be married, and for love, and after a duel.... What thoughts could he have for anything else?'
Maria Nikolaevna relapsed into dreamy silence, and began biting the handle of her fan with her big, but even, milkwhite teeth.
And Sanin felt mounting to his head again that intoxication which he had not been able to get rid of for the last two days.
The conversation between him and Maria Nikolaevna was carried on in an undertone, almost in a whisper, and this irritated and disturbed him the more....
When would it all end?
Weak people never put an end to things themselves--they always wait for the end.