He stopped short abruptly and bit his tongue.
Maria Nikolaevna slapped her open hand with her fan.
“Go on, Dimitri Pavlovitch, go on—I know what you were going to say. ‘If it comes to that, my dear madam, Maria Nikolaevna Polozov,’ you were going to say, ‘anything more curious than your marriage it would be impossible to conceive…. I know your husband well, from a child!’ That’s what you were going to say, you who can swim!”
“Excuse me,” Sanin was beginning….
“Isn’t it the truth? Isn’t it the truth?” Maria Nikolaevna pronounced insistently.
“Come, look me in the face and tell me I was wrong!”
Sanin did not know what to do with his eyes. “Well, if you like; it’s the truth, if you absolutely insist upon it,” he said at last.
Maria Nikolaevna shook her head. “Quite so, quite so. Well, and did you ask yourself, you who can swim, what could be the reason of such a strange … step on the part of a woman, not poor … and not a fool … and not ugly? All that does not interest you, perhaps, but no matter. I’ll tell you the reason not this minute, but directly the entr’acte is over. I am in continual uneasiness for fear some one should come in….”
Maria Nikolaevna had hardly uttered this last word when the outer door actually was half opened, and into the box was thrust a head—red, oily, perspiring, still young, but toothless; with sleek long hair, a pendent nose, huge ears like a bat’s, with gold spectacles on inquisitive dull eyes, and a pince-nez over the spectacles. The head looked round, saw Maria Nikolaevna, gave a nasty grin, nodded…. A scraggy neck craned in after it….
Maria Nikolaevna shook her handkerchief at it. “I’m not at home! Ich bin nicht zu Hause, Herr P…! Ich bin nicht zu Hause…. Ksh-sk! ksh-sh-sh!”