"I was driving by our fields and thinking how life here is as simple and monotonous as the fields themselves, and that it is possible to live here a serious life without trivialities. You know what it is to live for trivialities. I am called—and I go. I am loved—and I let myself be loved! Something in a showcase catches my eye and I buy it. I should always remain stationary were it not for those that have the will to move me….
"I was driving by our fields and thinking of the impossibility of such a life: I was thinking too that I would come to you and tell you of the mice…. Paris, Nice, Monaco, costumes, English perfumes, wine, Leonardo da Vinci, neo-classicism, lovers, what are they? With you everything is just as of old."
She rose and crossed to the window.
"The snow is blue-white here, as it is in Norway—I jilted Valpyanov there. The Norwegian people are like trolls. There is no better place than Russia! With you nothing changes. Have you forgiven me that July?"
Polunin approached and stood beside her.
"Yes, I have forgiven", he said earnestly.
"But I have not forgiven you that June!" she flashed at him; then she resumed: "The library, too, is the same as ever. Do you remember how we used to read Maupassant together in there?"
Kseniya Ippolytovna approached the library-door, opened it, and went in. Inside were book-cases behind whose glass frames stood even rows of gilded volumes; there was also a sofa, and close to it a large, round, polished table. The last yellow rays of the sun came in through the windows. Unlike that in the study, the light in here was not cold, but warm and waxy, so that again Kseniya Ippolytovna's face seemed strangely green to Polunin, her hair a yellow-red; her large, dark, deep-sunken eyes bore a stubborn look.
"God has endowed you with wonderful beauty, Kseniya, Ippolytovna,"
Polunin said gravely.
She gave him a keen glance; then smiled. "God has made me wonderfully tempting! By the way, you used to dream of faith; have you found it?"