'And I?' repeated Malevsky with his evil smile….
'You would offer him a poisoned sweetmeat.'
Malevsky's face changed slightly, and assumed for an instant a Jewish expression, but he laughed directly.
'And as for you, Voldemar,…' Zinaida went on, 'but that's enough, though; let us play another game.'
'M'sieu Voldemar, as the queen's page, would have held up her train when she ran into the garden,' Malevsky remarked malignantly.
I was crimson with anger, but Zinaida hurriedly laid a hand on my shoulder, and getting up, said in a rather shaky voice:
'I have never given your excellency the right to be rude, and therefore I will ask you to leave us.' She pointed to the door.
'Upon my word, princess,' muttered Malevsky, and he turned quite pale.
'The princess is right,' cried Byelovzorov, and he too rose.
'Good God, I'd not the least idea,' Malevsky went on, 'in my words there was nothing, I think, that could … I had no notion of offending you….
Forgive me.'
Zinaida looked him up and down coldly, and coldly smiled.
'Stay, then, certainly,' she pronounced with a careless gesture of her arm. 'M'sieu Voldemar and I were needlessly incensed.
It is your pleasure to sting … may it do you good.'
'Forgive me,' Malevsky repeated once more; while I, my thoughts dwelling on Zinaida's gesture, said to myself again that no real queen could with greater dignity have shown a presumptuous subject to the door.
The game of forfeits went on for a short time after this little scene; every one felt rather ill at ease, not so much on account of this scene, as from another, not quite definite, but oppressive feeling.
No one spoke of it, but every one was conscious of it in himself and in his neighbour.
Meidanov read us his verses; and Malevsky praised them with exaggerated warmth.
'He wants to show how good he is now,' Lushin whispered to me.
We soon broke up.
A mood of reverie seemed to have come upon Zinaida; the old princess sent word that she had a headache; Nirmatsky began to complain of his rheumatism….
I could not for a long while get to sleep. I had been impressed by Zinaida's story.
'Can there have been a hint in it?' I asked myself: 'and at whom and at what was she hinting?
And if there really is anything to hint at … how is one to make up one's mind?
No, no, it can't be,' I whispered, turning over from one hot cheek on to the other….
But I remembered the expression of Zinaida's face during her story…. I remembered the exclamation that had broken from Lushin in the Neskutchny gardens, the sudden change in her behaviour to me, and I was lost in conjectures.
'Who is he?'
These three words seemed to stand before my eyes traced upon the darkness; a lowering malignant cloud seemed hanging over me, and I felt its oppressiveness, and waited for it to break.
I had grown used to many things of late; I had learned much from what I had seen at the Zasyekins; their disorderly ways, tallow candle-ends, broken knives and forks, grumpy Vonifaty, and shabby maid-servants, the manners of the old princess—all their strange mode of life no longer struck me….
But what I was dimly discerning now in Zinaida, I could never get used to….
'An adventuress!' my mother had said of her one day.
An adventuress—she, my idol, my divinity?
This word stabbed me, I tried to get away from it into my pillow, I was indignant—and at the same time what would I not have agreed to, what would I not have given only to be that lucky fellow at the fountain!… My blood was on fire and boiling within me.
'The garden … the fountain,' I mused….
'I will go into the garden.'
I dressed quickly and slipped out of the house.
The night was dark, the trees scarcely whispered, a soft chill air breathed down from the sky, a smell of fennel trailed across from the kitchen garden.
I went through all the walks; the light sound of my own footsteps at once confused and emboldened me; I stood still, waited and heard my heart beating fast and loudly.
At last I went up to the fence and leaned against the thin bar.
Suddenly, or was it my fancy, a woman's figure flashed by, a few paces from me … I strained my eyes eagerly into the darkness, I held my breath.
What was that?
Did I hear steps, or was it my heart beating again?
'Who is here?' I faltered, hardly audibly.
What was that again, a smothered laugh … or a rustling in the leaves … or a sigh just at my ear?
I felt afraid …
'Who is here?' I repeated still more softly.
The air blew in a gust for an instant; a streak of fire flashed across the sky; it was a star falling.
'Zinaida?' I wanted to call, but the word died away on my lips.
And all at once everything became profoundly still around, as is often the case in the middle of the night….
Even the grasshoppers ceased their churr in the trees—only a window rattled somewhere.