Then, suddenly Sanine’s face wore a furious expression as he closely watched the effect of his words upon his companion.
Novikoff showed obvious pleasure at the thought of the woman he desired being immaculate. Into those honest sorrowful eyes, there came a look of animal jealousy and concupiscence.
“Oho!” exclaimed Sanine threateningly, as he got up. “Then what I have to tell you is this: Lida has not only fallen in love with Sarudine, but she has also had illicit relations with him, and is now enceinte.”
There was dead silence in the room. Novikoff smiled a strange, sickly smile and rubbed his hands. From his trembling lips there issued a faint cry. Sanine stood over him, looking straight into his eyes. The wrinkled corners of his mouth showed suppressed anger.
“Well, why don’t you speak?” he asked.
Novikoff looked up for a moment, but instantly avoided the other’s glance, his features being still distorted by a vacuous smile.
“Lida has just gone through a terrible ordeal,” said Sanine in a low voice, as if soliloquising. If I had not chanced to overtake her, she would not be living now, and what yesterday was a healthful, handsome girl would now be lying in the river-mud, a bloated corpse, devoured by crabs. The question is not one of her death—we must each of us die some day—yet how sad to think that with her all the brightness and joy created for others by her personality would also have perished. Of course, Lida is not the only one in all the world; but, my God! if there were no girlish loveliness left, it would be as sad and gloomy as the grave.
“For my part, I am eager to commit murder when I see a poor girl brought to ruin in this senseless way. Personally, it is a matter of utter indifference to me whether you marry Lida or go to the devil, but I must tell you that you are an idiot. If you had got one sound idea in your head, would you worry yourself and others so much merely because a young woman, free to pick and choose, had become the mistress of a man who was unworthy of her, and by following her sexual impulse had achieved her own complete development? Nor are you the only idiot, let me tell you. There are millions of your sort who make life into a prison, without sunshine or warmth! How often have you given rein to your lust in company with some harlot, the sharer of your sordid debauch? In Lida’s case it was passion, the poetry of youth, and strength, and beauty. By what right, then, do you shrink from her, you that call yourself an intelligent, sensible man? What has her past to do with you? Is she less beautiful? Or less fitted for loving, or for being loved? Is it that you yourself wanted to be the first to possess her? Now then, speak!”
“You know very well that it is not that!” said Novikoff, as his lips trembled.
“Ah! yes, but it is!” cried Sanine. “What else could it be, pray?”