“Drive on!” he shouted to the driver.
At that moment, though he had neither seen nor heard anything, he knew that the door of the house had opened, he knew it by the sweet and stormy beating of his heart.
“Romochka! where are you going?” he heard Alexandra Petrovna’s clear, happy voice behind him.
Romashov, by a strong pull, drew the driver, who was sitting opposite him, back by the girdle, and jumped out of the fly. Shurochka stood in the open door as if she were framed in a dark room. She wore a smooth white dress with red flowers in the sash. The same sort of red flowers were twined in her hair. How wonderful! Romashov felt instantly and infallibly that this was she, but, nevertheless, did not recognize her. To him it was a new revelation, radiant and in festal array.
While Romashov was mumbling his felicitations, Shurochka forced him, without letting go his hands, softly and with gentle violence, to enter the gloomy hall with her. At the same time she uttered half-aloud, in a hurried and nervous tone—
“Thanks, Romochka, for coming. Ah, how much I was afraid that you would plead some excuse! But remember now, to-day you are to be jolly and amiable. Don’t do anything which will attract attention. Now, how absurd you are! Directly any one touches you, you shrivel up like a sensitive-plant.”
“Alexandra Petrovna, your letter has upset me. There is an expression you make use of....”
“My dear boy! what nonsense!” she grasped both his hands and pressed them hard, gazing into the depths of his eyes. In that glance of hers there was something which Romashov had never seen before—a caressing tenderness, an intensity, and something besides, which he could not interpret. In the mysterious depths of her dark pupils fixed so long and earnestly on him he read a strange, elusive significance, a message uttered in the mysterious language of the soul.
“Please—don’t let us talk of this to-day! No doubt you will be pleased to hear that I have been watching for you. I know what a coward you are, you see. Don’t you dare to look at me like that, now!”
She laughed in some confusion and released his hands.