Sasha quickly put on his blouse, somehow arranged his shirt and looked at Liudmilla cautiously, indecisively and shamefacedly. He saw that she was wiping her cheeks with her fingers; he walked up to her timidly and looked into her face—and the tears which were trickling down her cheeks weakened him into pity—and he felt no longer ashamed and angry.
"Why are you crying, dear Liudmillotchka?" he asked quietly.
And suddenly he flushed—he remembered that he had struck her.
"I hit you—forgive me! I didn't do it on purpose," he said timidly.
"Are you afraid you'll melt away, you silly boy, that you won't sit with your shoulders naked?" said Liudmilla reproachfully. "Or are you afraid that you'll get sunburnt, or your beauty and innocence be lost?"
"But why do you want me to do it, Liudmillotchka?" said Sasha with a grimace of embarrassment.
"Why?" said Liudmilla passionately, "because I love beauty. Because I am a pagan, a sinner. I ought to have been born in ancient Athens. I love flowers, perfumes, brightly coloured clothes, the naked body. They say there is a soul. I don't know, I've never seen it. And what is it to me? Let me die altogether like an Undine, let me melt away like a cloud under the sun. I love the body, the strong, agile, naked body, which is capable of enjoyment."
"Yes, but it can suffer also," said Sasha quietly.
"And to suffer is also good," whispered Liudmilla. "There is sweetness in pain—if only to feel the body, to see its nakedness and bodily beauty."
"But it is shameful to be without clothes," said Sasha timidly.