He danced like Vanka Tzigan, just as if he was swimming in the air. Then Pavl Odintzov and Sorokhin danced passionately and lightly after him. The consumptive Davidov also moved his feet about the floor, and coughed from the dust, smoke, and the strong odor of vodka and smoked sausage, which always smells like tanned hide.
They danced, and sang, and shouted, but each remembered that they were making merry, and gave each other a sort of test—a test of agility and endurance.
Tipsy Sitanov asked first one and then another:
"Do you think any one could really love a woman like that?"
He looked as if he were on the verge of tears.
Larionovich, lifting the sharp bones of his shoulders, answered:
"A woman is a woman—what more do you want?"
The two of whom they spoke disappeared unnoticed. Jikharev reappeared in the workshop in two or three days, went to the bath, and worked for two weeks in his corner, without speaking, pompous and estranged from every one.
"Have they gone?" asked Sitanov of himself, looking round the workshop with sad blue-gray eyes. His face was not handsome, for there was something elderly about it, but his eyes were clear and good. Sitanov was friendly to me—a fact which I owed to my thick note-book in which I had written poetry. He did not believe in God, but it was hard to understand who in the workshop, beside Larionovich, loved God and believed in Him. They all spoke of Him with levity, derisively, just as they liked to speak of their mistresses. Yet when they dined, or supped, they all crossed themselves, and when they went to bed, they said their prayers, and went to church on Sundays and feast days.
Sitanov did none of these things, and he was counted as an unbeliever.