Sanin woke up very early. He found himself at the highest pinnacle of human happiness; but it was not that prevented him from sleeping; the question, the vital, fateful question--how he could dispose of his estate as quickly and as advantageously as possible--disturbed his rest. The most diverse plans were mixed up in his head, but nothing had as yet come out clearly. He went out of the house to get air and freshen himself. He wanted to present himself to Gemma with a project ready prepared and not without.

What was the figure, somewhat ponderous and thick in the legs, but well-dressed, walking in front of him, with a slight roll and waddle in his gait? Where had he seen that head, covered with tufts of flaxen hair, and as it were set right into the shoulders, that soft cushiony back, those plump arms hanging straight down at his sides? Could it be Polozov, his old schoolfellow, whom he had lost sight of for the last five years? Sanin overtook the figure walking in front of him, turned round.... A broad, yellowish face, little pig's eyes, with white lashes and eyebrows, a short flat nose, thick lips that looked glued together, a round smooth chin, and that expression, sour, sluggish, and mistrustful--yes; it was he, it was Ippolit Polozov!

'Isn't my lucky star working for me again?' flashed through Sanin's mind.

'Polozov! Ippolit Sidorovitch! Is it you?'

The figure stopped, raised his diminutive eyes, waited a little, and ungluing his lips at last, brought out in a rather hoarse falsetto, 'Dimitri Sanin?'

'That's me!' cried Sanin, and he shook one of Polozov's hands; arrayed in tight kid-gloves of an ashen-grey colour, they hung as lifeless as before beside his barrel-shaped legs. 'Have you been here long? Where have you come from? Where are you stopping?'

'I came yesterday from Wiesbaden,' Polozov replied in deliberate tones, 'to do some shopping for my wife, and I'm going back to Wiesbaden to-day.'

'Oh, yes! You're married, to be sure, and they say, to such a beauty!'

Polozov turned his eyes away. 'Yes, they say so.'

Sanin laughed. 'I see you're just the same ... as phlegmatic as you were at school.'

'Why should I be different?'

'And they do say,' Sanin added with special emphasis on the word 'do,' 'that your wife is very rich.'

'They say that too.'

'Do you mean to say, Ippolit Sidorovitch, you are not certain on that point?'

'I don't meddle, my dear Dimitri ... Pavlovitch? Yes, Pavlovitch!--in my wife's affairs.'




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