Volodia listened to her and rubbed his forehead in intense, painful irresolution.
“It is only proud people who never speak and like to be alone,” Nyuta continued, pulling his hand down from his forehead. “You are proud, Volodia. Why do you squint at me like that? Look me in the eye, if you please. Now then, stick-in-the-mud!”
Volodia made up his mind to speak. In an effort to smile he stuck out his lower lip, blinked his eyes, and his hand again went to his head.
“I—I love you!” he exclaimed.
Nyuta raised her eyebrows in astonishment and burst out laughing.
“What is this I hear?” she chanted as singers do in an opera when they hear a terrible piece of news. “What? What did you say? Say it again! Say it again!”
“I—I love you!” Volodia repeated.
And involuntarily, without premeditation and not realising what he was doing, he took a step toward Nyuta and seized her arm above the wrist. Tears started into his eyes, and the whole world seemed to turn into a huge Turkish towel smelling of the river.
“Bravo, bravo!” he heard a laughing voice cry approvingly. “Why don’t you say something? I want to hear you speak! Now, then!”
Seeing that he was permitted to hold her arm, Volodia looked into Nyuta’s laughing face and awkwardly, uneasily, put both arms around her waist, bringing his wrists together behind her back. As he held her thus, she put her hands behind her head showing the dimples in her elbows, and, arranging her hair under her kerchief, she said in a quiet voice: