“I love the thunder in early May,” she sang in a loud, shrill soprano voice, and she cut short her song with a burst of laughter, but when she saw us she suddenly stood still and was silent,—she became embarrassed, and went as quietly as a lamb into the room in which the voice of Nikolai Efimych, her father, had been heard.
“She did not expect to see you,” Urbenin said, laughing.
A few minutes later she again came quietly into the room, sat down on the chair nearest the door and began to examine us. She stared at us boldly, not as if we were new people for her, but as if we were animals in the Zoological Gardens. For a minute we too looked at her in silence without moving.… I would have agreed to sit still and look at her for a whole hour in this way—she was so lovely that evening. As fresh as the air, rosy, breathing rapidly, her bosom rising and falling, her curls scattered wildly on her forehead, on her shoulders, and on her right hand that was raised to arrange her collar; with large, sparkling eyes.… And all this was found on one little body that a single glance could envelop. If you glanced for a moment at this small object you saw more than you would if you looked for a whole century at the endless horizon.… She looked at me seriously, from my feet upwards, inquiringly; when her eyes left me and passed to the Count or to the Pole I began to read in them the contrary: a glance that passed from the head to the feet, and laughter.…
I was the first to speak.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” I said, rising and going up to her. “Zinov'ev.… And let me introduce my friend, Count Karnéev.… We beg you to pardon us for breaking into your nice little house without an invitation.… We would, of course, never have done so if the storm had not driven us in.…”
“But that won't cause our little house to tumble down!” she said, laughing and giving me her hand.
She displayed her splendid white teeth. I sat down on a chair next to her, and told her how quite unexpectedly the storm had overtaken us on our walk. Our conversation began with the weather—the beginning of all beginnings. While we were talking, Mit'ka had had time to offer the Count two glasses of vodka with the inseparable tumbler of water. Thinking that I was not looking at him, the Count made a sweet grimace and shook his head after each glass.
“Perhaps you would like some refreshments?” Olenka asked me, and, not waiting for an answer, she left the room.
The first drops of rain rattled against the panes.… I went up to the windows.… It was now quite dark, and through the glass I could see nothing but the raindrops creeping down and the reflection of my own nose. There was a flash of lightning, which illuminated some of the nearest pines.
“Are the doors shut?” I heard the same tenor voice ask again. “Mit'ka, come here, you vile-spirited scoundrel! Shut the doors! Oh, Lord, what torments!”