“You brute!” Sanine laughed merrily, and slowly crossed the garden, careless as to who should see him.
A lizard darted across his path, and for a long while he followed the swift movements of its little supple green body in the long grass.
CHAPTER XIX.
Lida did not go home, but hurriedly turned her steps in an opposite direction. The streets were empty, the air stifling. Close to the wall and fence lay the short shadows, vanquished by the triumphant sun. Through mere force of habit, Lida opened her parasol. She never noticed if it was cold or hot, light or dark. She walked swiftly past the fences all dusty and overgrown with weeds, her head bowed, her eyes downcast. Now and again she met a few gasping pedestrians half- suffocated by the heat. Over the town lay silence, the oppressive silence of a summer afternoon.
A little white puppy had followed Lida. After eagerly sniffing her dress, it ran on in front, and, looking round, wagged its tail, as if to say that they were comrades. At the corner of a street stood a funny little fat boy, a portion of whose shirt peeped out at the back of his breeches. With cheeks distended and fruit-stained, he was vigorously blowing a wooden pipe.
Lida beckoned to the little puppy and smiled at the boy. Yet she did so almost unconsciously; her soul was imprisoned. An obscure force, separating her from the world, swept her onward, past the sunlight, the verdure, and all the joy of life, towards a black gulf that by the dull anguish within her she knew to be near.
An officer of her acquaintance rode by. On seeing Lida he reined in his horse, a roan, whose glossy coat shone in the sunlight.
“Lidia Petrovna!” he cried, in a pleasant, cheery voice, “Where are you going in all this heat?”
Mechanically her eyes glanced at his forage-cap, jauntily poised on his moist, sunburnt brow. She did not speak, but merely smiled her habitual, coquettish smile.
At that moment, ignorant herself as to what might happen, she echoed his question: