Mintz walked about the dim room, tapping his heels on the parquet floor, and though he spoke loudly, his voice held a note of yearning pain.
"I was in the park just now. That pond, those maple avenues— disintegrating, dying, disappearing—drive me melancholy mad. The ice has already melted in the pond by the dam. Why can we not bring back the romantic eighteenth century, and sit in dressing-gowns, musing with delicious sadness over our pipes? Why are we not illustrious lords?"
Lydia Constantinovna smiled as she answered: "Why not indeed! That is a poetic fancy. But the reality is very much worse. Marin-Brod has never been a country house, it is a forest manor, a forestry-office and nothing more … nothing more…. I always feel an interloper here. This is only my second day and I am already depressed." Her tone was sad, yet it held just a perceptible note of anger.
"Reality and Fancy? Certainly I am an artist, for I always see the latter, the beautiful and spiritual side," Mintz declared; and added in an undertone: "Do you remember yesterday … the park?"
"Oh, yes, the park," Lydia replied in a tired, subdued tone. "They hold the Twelfth Gospel Service to-day; when I was a young girl, how I used to love standing in church with a candle—I felt so good. And now I love nothing!"
It was already quite dark in the drawing room. A wavering, greenish- golden light streamed in through the windows and played on the dim walls. Ivanov came out of his study. He was wearing high boots and a leather jacket, and carried a rifle under his arm. He went silently to the door. Lydia Constantinovna stopped him.
"Are you going out again, Sergius? Is it to hunt?"
"Yes."
Ivanov stood still and Lydia went up to him. She had dark shadows under her eyes, and the hand of time—already bearing away her youth and beauty—lay upon her marvellously white skin, at her lips and on her cheeks, in faint, scarcely visible wrinkles. Ivanov noticed it distinctly.
"Does one hunt at night—in the dark? I did not know that," Lydia said, repeating "I did not know…."