And suddenly she leaned forward; the long fingers holding the knitting-needles ceased all motion. She had heard a footstep—and she knew every footstep of the farm....
He was leaning over the back of her chair; she saw, against the blue when she opened her eyes, his clear, dark skin, his clear, dark contemplative eyes. Her arms slowly raised themselves; her lips muttered unintelligible words which were broken into by the cool of his cheek as she drew him down to her. She rose to her feet and recoiled, and again, with her arms stretched straight before her, as if she were blind and felt her way, her head thrown back and her eyes closed, an Oriental with a face of chiselled alabaster. And with her eyes still closed, her lips against his ear as if she were asleep, she whispered:
“Oh, take me! Take me! Now! For good....”
But these words that came from her without will or control ceased, and she had none to say of her own volition. There fell upon them the silent nirvana of passion.
And suddenly, vibrant, shrill, and interrupted by sobs and the grinding of minute teeth, there rose up in the child’s voice the words:
“Nobody must be loved but me. Nobody must be loved but me.”
They felt minute hands near their knees; they were parted by a little child, who panted and breathed through her nostrils. They looked at each other with eyes into which, very slowly, there came comprehension. And then, over the little thing’s head, Katya repeated:
“Nobody must be loved but me. Nobody must be loved but me.” And with a quick colour upon her cheeks and the wetness of tears in her eyes, “Oh, poor child!” she said.
For in the words the child had given to her she recognized the torture of her own passion.
That night quite late Katya descended the stairs upon tiptoe. She spoke in a very low voice: