Then began talk which was thoroughly vapid and insincere, the spoken being false, and the unspoken, true. Sanine sat silently listening to this mute but sincere conversation, as expressed by faces, hands, feet and tremulous accents. Lida was unhappy, Volochine longed for all her beauty, while Sarudine loathed Lida, Sanine, Volochine, and the world generally. He wanted to go, yet he could not make a move. He was for doing something outrageous, yet he could only smoke cigarette after cigarette, while dominated by the desire to proclaim Lida his mistress to all present.
“And how do you like being here? Are you not sorry to have left Petersburg behind you?” asked Lida, suffering meanwhile intense torture, and wondering why she did not get up and go.
“Mais au contraire!” lisped Volochine, as he waved his hand in a finicking fashion and gazed ardently at Lida.
“Come! come! no pretty speeches!” said Lida, coquettishly, while to Sarudine her whole being seemed to say:
“You think that I am wretched, don’t you? and utterly crushed? But I am nothing of the kind, my friend. Look at me!”
“Oh, Lidia Petrovna!” said Sarudine, “you surely don’t call that a pretty speech!”
“I beg your pardon?” asked Lida drily, as if she had not heard, and then, in a different tone, she again addressed Volochine.
“Do tell me something about life in Petersburg. Here, we don’t live, we only vegetate.”
Sarudine saw that Volochine was smiling to himself, as if he did not believe that the former had ever been on intimate terms with Lida.
“Ah! Ah! Ah! Very good!” he said to himself, as he bit his lip viciously.