“What an odd fancy!” I said, laughing and looking into her eyes that were full of holy horror at this terrible but effective death. “Then you don't want to die in an ordinary dress?”
“No!…” Olenka shook her head. “And so that everybody should see me.”
“The frock you are in is far better than any fashionable and expensive dress.… It suits you. In it you look like the red flower of the green woods.”
“No, that is not true!” And Olenka sighed ingenuously. “This frock is a cheap one; it can't be pretty.”
The Count came up to our window with the evident intention of talking to pretty Olenka. My friend could speak three European languages, but he did not know how to talk to women. He stood near us awkwardly, smiling in an inane manner; then he lowed,—inarticulately, “Er—yes,”—and retraced his steps to the decanter of vodka.
“You were singing ‘I love the thunder in early May,’ ” I said to Olenka. “Have those verses been set to music?”
“No, I sing all the verses I know to my own melodies.”
I happened by chance to glance back. Urbenin was looking at us. In his eyes I read hatred and animosity: passions that were not at all in keeping with his kind, meek face.
“Can he be jealous?” I thought.
The poor fellow caught my inquiring glance, rose from his chair and went into the lobby to look for something.… Even by his gait one could see that he was agitated. The peals of thunder became louder and louder, more prolonged, and oftener repeated.… The lightning unceasingly illuminated the sky, the pines and the wet earth with its pleasant but blinding light.… The rain was not likely to end soon. I left the window and went up to the bookshelves and began to examine Olenka's library. “Tell me what you read, and I will tell you what you are,” I said. But out of the goods that were so symmetrically ranged on the shelves it was difficult to arrive at any estimate of Olenka's mental capacities or “educational standard.” There was a strange medley on those shelves. Three anthologies, one book of Börne's, Evtushevsky's arithmetic, the second volume of Lermontov's works, Shklyarevsky, a number of the magazine Work, a cookery book, Skladchina … I might enumerate other books for you, but at the moment I took Skladchina from the shelf and began to turn over the pages. The door leading into the next room opened, and a person entered the drawing-room, who at once diverted my attention from Olenka's standard of culture. This person was a tall, muscular man in a print dressing-gown and torn slippers, with an original countenance. His face, covered all over with blue veins, was ornamented with a pair of sergeant's moustaches and whiskers, and had in general a strong resemblance to a bird. His whole face seemed to be drawn forwards, as if trying to concentrate itself in the tip of the nose. Such faces are like the spout of a pitcher. This person's small head was set on a long thin throat, with a large Adam's-apple, and shook about like the nesting-box of a starling in the wind.… This strange man looked round on us all with his dim green eyes, and then let them rest on the Count.