Liubka was sleeping on her back, with one bare arm stretched out along the body, and the other on her breast.
Lichonin bent nearer, to her very face.
She was breathing evenly and deeply.
This breathing of her young, healthy body was, despite sleep, pure and almost aromatic.
He cautiously ran his fingers over her bare arm and stroked her breast a little below the clavicle.
“What am I doing?” his reason suddenly cried out within him in terror; but some one else answered for Lichonin:
“But I’m not doing anything.
I only want to ask if she’s sleeping comfortably, and whether she doesn’t want some tea.”
But Liubka suddenly awoke, opened her eyes, blinked them for a moment and opened them again.
She gave a long, long stretch, and with a kindly, not yet fully reasoning smile, encircled Lichonin’s neck with her warm, strong arm.
“Sweetie!
Darling!” caressingly uttered the woman in a crooning voice, somewhat hoarse from sleep. “Why, I was waiting for you and waiting, and even became angry.
And after that I fell asleep and all night long saw you in my sleep.
Come to me, my baby, my lil’ precious!” She drew him to her, breast against breast.
Lichonin almost did not resist; he was all atremble, as from a chill, and meaninglessly repeating in a galloping whisper with chattering teeth:
“No, now, Liuba, don’t … Really, don’t do that, Liuba … Ah, let’s drop this, Liuba … Don’t torture me.
I won’t vouch for myself … Let me alone, now, Liuba, for God’s sake! … ”
“My-y little silly!” she exclaimed in a laughing, joyous voice. “Come to me, my joy!”— and, overcoming the last, altogether insignificant opposition, she pressed his mouth to hers and kissed him hard and warmly— kissed him sincerely, perhaps for the first and last time in her life.
“Oh, you scoundrel!
What am I doing?” declaimed some honest, prudent, and false body in Lichonin.
“Well, now?
Are you eased up a bit?” asked Liubka kindly, kissing Lichonin’s lips for the last time. “Oh, you, my little student! … ”
Chapter 12
With pain at soul, with malice and repulsion toward himself and Liubka, and, it would seem, toward all the world, Lichonin without undressing flung himself upon the wooden, lopsided, sagging divan and even gnashed his teeth from the smarting shame.
Sleep would not come to him, while his thoughts revolved around this fool action— as he himself called the carrying off of Liubka,— in which an atrocious vaudeville had been so disgustingly intertwined with a deep drama.
“It’s all one,” he stubbornly repeated to himself. “Once I have given my promise, I’ll see the business through to the end.
And, of course, that which has occurred just now will never, never be repeated!
My God, who hasn’t fallen, giving in to a momentary laxity of the nerves?
Some philosopher or other has expressed a deep, remarkable truth, when he affirmed that the value of the human soul may be known by the depth of its fall and the height of its flight.
But still, the devil take the whole of this idiotical day and that equivocal reasoner— the reporter Platonov, and his own— Lichonin’s— absurd outburst of chivalry!
Just as though, in reality, this had not taken place in real life, but in Chernishevski’s novel, What’s to be done?
And how, devil take it, with what eyes will I look upon her tomorrow?”
His head was on fire; his eyelids were smarting, his lips dry.
He was nervously smoking a cigarette and frequently got up from the divan to take the decanter of water off the table, and avidly, straight from its mouth, drink several big draughts.
Then, by some accidental effort of the will, he succeeded in tearing his thoughts away from the past night, and at once a heavy sleep, without any visions and images, enveloped him as though in black cotton.
He awoke long past noon, at two or three o’clock; at first could not come to himself for a long while; smacked his lips and looked around the room with glazed, heavy eyes.
All that had happened during the night seemed to have flown out of his memory.
But when he saw Liubka, who was quietly and motionlessly sitting on the bed, with head lowered and hands crossed on her knees, he began to groan and grunt from vexation and confusion.
Now he recalled everything.
And at that minute he experienced in his own person how heavy it is to see in the morning, with one’s own eyes, the results of folly committed the night before.
“Are you awake, sweetie?” asked Liubka kindly.
She got up from the bed, walked up to the divan, sat down at Lichonin’s feet, and cautiously patted his blanket-covered leg.
“Why, I woke up long ago and was sitting all the while; I was afraid to wake you up.
You were sleeping so very soundly!”
She stretched toward him and kissed him on the cheek.
Lichonin made a wry face and gently pushed her away from him.
“Wait, Liubochka!
Wait; that’s not necessary.
Do you understand— absolutely, never necessary.
That which took place yesterday— well, that’s an accident.