“Gobbled it all up, eh?”
Soloveitchik patted the dog’s shaggy coat and felt its warm body writhe in joyous response to his touch. Then he went back to the house.
He could hear Sultan’s chain rattle, and the yard seemed less gloomy than before, while blacker and more sinister was the mill with its tall chimney and narrow sheds that looked like coffins. From the window a broad ray of light fell across the garden, illuminating in mystic fashion the frail little flowers that shrank beneath the turbulent heaven with its countless banners, black and ominous, unfolded to the night.
Overcome by grief, unnerved by a sense of solitude and of some irreparable loss, Soloveitchik went back into his room, sat down at the table, and wept.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Volochine owned immense works in St. Petersburg upon which the existence of thousands of his employés depended.
At the present time, while a strike was in progress, he had turned his back upon the crowd of hungry, dirty malcontents, and was enjoying a trip in the provinces. Libertine as he was, he thought of nothing but women, and in young, fresh, provincial women he displayed an intense, in fact, an absorbing interest. He pictured them as delightfully shy and timid, yet sturdy as a woodland mushroom, and their provocative perfume of youth and purity he scented from afar.
Volochine had clothed his puny little body in virgin white, after sprinkling himself from head to foot with various essences; and, although he did not exactly approve of Sarudine’s society, he hailed a droschky and hastened to the latter’s rooms.
Sarudine was sitting at the window, drinking cold tea.
“What a lovely evening!” he kept saying to himself, as he looked out on the garden. But his thoughts were elsewhere. He felt ashamed and afraid.