Yet pale, and strange, and
cold, they appeared to him, and their eyes had a look of curiosity and
malevolent glee. Then, in his dejection, he thought of Lida.
He pictured her as he had seen her last; her large, sad eyes; the thin
blouse that lightly veiled her soft bosom; her hair in a single loose
plait. In her face Sarudine saw neither malice nor contempt. Those dark
eyes gazed at him in sorrowful reproach. He remembered how he had
repulsed her at the moment of her supreme distress. The sense of having
lost her wounded him like a knife.
"She suffered then far more than I do now.... I thrust her from me....
I almost wanted her to drown herself; wanted her to die."
As to a last anchor that should save him, his whole soul turned to her.
He yearned for her caresses, her sympathy. For an instant it seemed to
him as if all his actual sufferings would efface the past; yet he knew,
alas! that Lida would never, never come back to him, and that all was
at an end. Before him lay nothing but the blank, abysmal void!
Raising his arm, Sarudine pressed his hand against his brow.
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