He began to talk—at first reluctantly, unskilfully—but afterwards he talked more freely, chattered away in fact. Maria Nikolaevna was a very good listener; and moreover she seemed herself so frank, that she led others unconsciously on to frankness. She possessed that great gift of “intimateness”—le terrible don de la familiarité—to which Cardinal Retz refers. Sanin talked of his travels, of his life in Petersburg, of his youth…. Had Maria Nikolaevna been a lady of fashion, with refined manners, he would never have opened out so; but she herself spoke of herself as a “good fellow,” who had no patience with ceremony of any sort; it was in those words that she characterised herself to Sanin. And at the same time this “good fellow” walked by his side with feline grace, slightly bending towards him, and peeping into his face; and this “good fellow” walked in the form of a young feminine creature, full of the tormenting, fiery, soft and seductive charm, of which—for the undoing of us poor weak sinful men—only Slav natures are possessed, and but few of them, and those never of pure Slav blood, with no foreign alloy. Sanin’s walk with Maria Nikolaevna, Sanin’s talk with Maria Nikolaevna lasted over an hour. And they did not stop once; they kept walking about the endless avenues of the park, now mounting a hill and admiring the view as they went, and now going down into the valley, and getting hidden in the thick shadows,—and all the while arm-in-arm. At times Sanin felt positively irritated; he had never walked so long with Gemma, his darling Gemma … but this lady had simply taken possession of him, and there was no escape! “Aren’t you tired?” he said to her more than once. “I never get tired,” she answered. Now and then they met other people walking in the park; almost all of them bowed—some respectfully, others even cringingly. To one of them, a very handsome, fashionably dressed dark man, she called from a distance with the best Parisian accent, “Comte, vous savez, il ne faut pas venir me voir—ni aujourd’hui ni demain.” The man took off his hat, without speaking, and dropped a low bow.
“Who’s that?” asked Sanin with the bad habit of asking questions characteristic of all Russians.
“Oh, a Frenchman, there are lots of them here … He’s dancing attendance on me too. It’s time for our coffee, though. Let’s go home; you must be hungry by this time, I should say. My better half must have got his eye-peeps open by now.”
“Better half! Eye-peeps!” Sanin repeated to himself … “And speaks French so well … what a strange creature!”
Maria Nikolaevna was not mistaken. When she went back into the hotel with Sanin, her “better half” or “dumpling” was already seated, the invariable fez on his head, before a table laid for breakfast.
“I’ve been waiting for you!” he cried, making a sour face. “I was on the point of having coffee without you.”
“Never mind, never mind,” Maria Nikolaevna responded cheerfully. “Are you angry? That’s good for you; without that you’d turn into a mummy altogether. Here I’ve brought a visitor. Make haste and ring! Let us have coffee—the best coffee—in Saxony cups on a snow-white cloth!”
She threw off her hat and gloves, and clapped her hands.
Polozov looked at her from under his brows.
“What makes you so skittish to-day, Maria Nikolaevna?” he said in an undertone.