“If you had drowned yourself, what then? The powers of good and evil would have neither gained nor lost thereby. Your corpse, bloated, disfigured, and covered with slime, would have been dragged from the river, and buried. That would have been all!”
Lida had a lurid vision of greenish, turbid water with slimy, trailing weeds and gruesome bubbles floating round her.
“No, no, never!” she thought, turning pale. “I would rather bear all the shame of it … and Novikoff … everything … anything but that.”
“Ah! look how scared you are!” said Sanine, laughing.
Lida smiled through her tears, and her very smile consoled her.
“Whatever happens, I mean to live!” she said with passionate energy.
“Good!” exclaimed Sanine, as he jumped up. “Nothing is more awful than the thought of death. But so long as you can bear the burden without losing perception of the sights and sounds of life, I say live! Am I not right? Now, give me your paw!”
Lida held out her hand. The shy, feminine gesture betokened childish gratitude.
“That’s right … What a pretty little hand you’ve got.”
Lida smiled and said nothing.