“I had an uncle a huntsman,” she went on.
“I used to go out hunting with him—in the spring. It was delicious! Here we are now, on the pools with you. Only, I see, you’re a Russian, and yet mean to marry an Italian. Well, that’s your sorrow. What’s that? A stream again! Gee up!”
The horse took the leap, but Maria Nikolaevna’s hat fell off her head, and her curls tumbled loose over her shoulders. Sanin was just going to get off his horse to pick up the hat, but she shouted to him, “Don’t touch it, I’ll get it myself,” bent low down from the saddle, hooked the handle of her whip into the veil, and actually did get the hat. She put it on her head, but did not fasten up her hair, and again darted off, positively holloaing. Sanin dashed along beside her, by her side leaped trenches, fences, brooks, fell in and scrambled out, flew down hill, flew up hill, and kept watching her face. What a face it was! It was all, as it were, wide open: wide-open eyes, eager, bright, and wild; lips, nostrils, open too, and breathing eagerly; she looked straight before her, and it seemed as though that soul longed to master everything it saw, the earth, the sky, the sun, the air itself; and would complain of one thing only—that dangers were so few, and all she could overcome. “Sanin!” she cried, “why, this is like Bürger’s Lenore! Only you’re not dead—eh? Not dead … I am alive!” She let her force and daring have full fling. It seemed not an Amazon on a galloping horse, but a young female centaur at full speed, half-beast and half-god, and the sober, well-bred country seemed astounded, as it was trampled underfoot in her wild riot!
Maria Nikolaevna at last drew up her foaming and bespattered mare; she was staggering under her, and Sanin’s powerful but heavy horse was gasping for breath.
“Well, do you like it?” Maria Nikolaevna asked in a sort of exquisite whisper.
“I like it!” Sanin echoed back ecstatically. And his blood was on fire.
“This isn’t all, wait a bit.” She held out her hand. Her glove was torn across.
“I told you I would lead you to the forest, to the mountains…. Here they are, the mountains!” The mountains, covered with tall forest, rose about two hundred feet from the place they had reached in their wild ride. “Look, here is the road; let us turn into it—and forwards. Only at a walk. We must let our horses get their breath.”
They rode on. With one vigorous sweep of her arm Maria Nikolaevna flung back her hair. Then she looked at her gloves and took them off. “My hands will smell of leather,” she said, “you won’t mind that, eh?” … Maria Nikolaevna smiled, and Sanin smiled too. Their mad gallop together seemed to have finally brought them together and made them friends.
“How old are you?” she asked suddenly.