Sanin was sitting bent up. He raised his head. 'I'm not at all bored, Maria Nikolaevna, and I am listening to you with curiosity. Only I ... confess ... I wonder why you say all this to me?'
Maria Nikolaevna edged a little away on the sofa.
'You wonder?... Are you slow to guess? Or so modest?'
Sanin lifted his head higher than before.
'I tell you all this,' Maria Nikolaevna continued in an unmoved tone, which did not, however, at all correspond with the expression of her face, 'because I like you very much; yes, don't be surprised, I'm not joking; because since I have met you, it would be painful to me that you had a disagreeable recollection of me ... not disagreeable even, that I shouldn't mind, but untrue. That's why I have made you come here, and am staying alone with you and talking to you so openly.... Yes, yes, openly. I'm not telling a lie. And observe, Dimitri Pavlovitch, I know you're in love with another woman, that you're going to be married to her.... Do justice to my disinterestedness! Though indeed it's a good opportunity for you to say in your turn: Cela ne tire pas à conséquence!'
She laughed, but her laugh suddenly broke off, and she stayed motionless, as though her own words had suddenly struck her, and in her eyes, usually so gay and bold, there was a gleam of something like timidity, even like sadness.
'Snake! ah, she's a snake!' Sanin was thinking meanwhile; 'but what a lovely snake!'
'Give me my opera-glass,' Maria Nikolaevna said suddenly. 'I want to see whether this jeune première really is so ugly. Upon my word, one might fancy the government appointed her in the interests of morality, so that the young men might not lose their heads over her.'
Sanin handed her the opera-glass, and as she took it from him, swiftly, but hardly audibly, she snatched his hand in both of hers.
'Please don't be serious,' she whispered with a smile. 'Do you know what, no one can put fetters on me, but then you see I put no fetters on others. I love freedom, and I don't acknowledge duties--not only for myself. Now move to one side a little, and let us listen to the play.'
Maria Nikolaevna turned her opera-glass upon the stage, and Sanin proceeded to look in the same direction, sitting beside her in the half dark of the box, and involuntarily drinking in the warmth and fragrance of her luxurious body, and as involuntarily turning over and over in his head all she had said during the evening--especially during the last minutes.