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.
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