Maria Nikolaevna relapsed into dreamy silence, and began biting the handle of her fan with her big, but even, milkwhite teeth.
And Sanin felt mounting to his head again that intoxication which he had not been able to get rid of for the last two days.
The conversation between him and Maria Nikolaevna was carried on in an undertone, almost in a whisper, and this irritated and disturbed him the more….
When would it all end?
Weak people never put an end to things themselves—they always wait for the end.
Some one sneezed on the stage; this sneeze had been put into the play by the author as the “comic relief” or “element”; there was certainly no other comic element in it; and the audience made the most of it; they laughed.
This laugh, too, jarred upon Sanin.
There were moments when he actually did not know whether he was furious or delighted, bored or amused. Oh, if Gemma could have seen him!
“It’s really curious,” Maria Nikolaevna began all at once. “A man informs one and in such a calm voice, ‘I am going to get married’; but no one calmly says to one, ‘I’m going to throw myself in the water.’ And yet what difference is there? It’s curious, really.”
Annoyance got the upper hand of Sanin. “There’s a great difference, Maria Nikolaevna! It’s not dreadful at all to throw oneself in the water if one can swim; and besides … as to the strangeness of marriages, if you come to that …”