“Excuse me,”—exclaimed Lúshin,—“he was over forty years of age.”
“Over forty years of age,”—repeated Zinaída, darting a swift glance at him....
I soon went home.—“She is in love,” my lips whispered involuntarily.... “But with whom?”
XII
The days passed by. Zinaída grew more and more strange, more and more incomprehensible. One day I entered her house and found her sitting on a straw-bottomed chair, with her head pressed against the sharp edge of a table. She straightened up ... her face was again all bathed in tears.
“Ah! It’s you!”—she said, with a harsh grimace.—“Come hither.”
I went up to her: she laid her hand on my head and, suddenly seizing me by the hair, began to pull it.
“It hurts” ... I said at last.
“Ah! It hurts! And doesn’t it hurt me? Doesn’t it hurt me?”—she repeated.
“Aï!”—she suddenly cried, perceiving that she had pulled out a small tuft of my hair.—“What have I done? Poor M’sieu Voldemar!” She carefully straightened out the hairs she had plucked out, wound them round her finger, and twisted them into a ring.