For some moments Lida remained motionless in the same place, and Sanine’s curious gaze was riveted on her white silhouette in the moonlight. Sarudine now came from the lighted drawing-room on to the veranda. Sanine distinctly heard the faint jingling of his spurs. In the drawing-room Tanaroff was playing an old-fashioned, mournful waltz whose languorous cadences floated on the air. Approaching Lida, Sarudine gently and deftly placed his arm round her waist. Sanine could perceive that both figures became merged into one that swayed in the misty light.
“Why so pensive?” murmured Sarudine, with shining eyes, as his lips touched Lida’s dainty little ear. Lida was at once joyful and afraid. Now, as on all occasions when Sarudine embraced her, she felt a strange thrill. She knew that in intelligence and culture he was her inferior, and that she could never be dominated by him; yet at the same time she was aware of something delightful and alarming in letting herself be touched by this strong, comely young man. She seemed to be gazing down into a mysterious, unfathomable abyss, and thinking, “I could hurl myself in, if I chose.”
“We shall be seen,” she murmured half audibly.
Though not encouraging his embrace, she yet did not shrink from it; such passive surrender excited him the more.
“One word, just one!” whispered Sarudine, as he crushed her closer to him, his veins throbbing with desire; “will you come?”
Lida trembled. It was not the first time that he had asked her this question, and each time she had felt strange tremors that deprived her of her will.
“Why?” she asked, in a low voice as she gazed dreamily at the moon.
“Why? That I may have you near me, and see you, and talk to you. Oh! like this, it’s torture! Yes, Lida, you’re torturing me! Now, will you come?”
So saying, he strained her to him, passionately. His touch as that of glowing iron, sent a thrill through her limbs; it seemed as if she were enveloped in a mist, languorous, dreamy, oppressive. Her lithe, supple frame grew rigid and then swayed towards him, trembling with pleasure and yet with fear. Around her all things had undergone a curious, sudden change. The moon was a moon no longer; it seemed close, close to the trellis-work of the veranda, as if it hung just above the luminous lawn. The garden was not the one that she knew, but another garden, sombre, mysterious, that, suddenly approaching, closed round her. Her brain reeled. She drew back, and with strange languor, freed herself from Sarudine’s embrace.
“Yes,” she murmured with difficulty. Her lips were white and parched.