manners, he would never have opened out so; but she herself spoke of herself as a 'good fellow,' who had no patience with ceremony of any sort; it was in those words that she characterised herself to Sanin. And at the same time this 'good fellow' walked by his side with feline grace, slightly bending towards him, and peeping into his face; and this 'good fellow' walked in the form of a young feminine creature, full of the tormenting, fiery, soft and seductive charm, of which—for the undoing of us poor weak sinful men—only Slav natures are possessed, and but few of them, and those never of pure Slav blood, with no foreign alloy. Sanin's walk with Maria Nikolaevna, Sanin's talk with Maria Nikolaevna lasted over an hour. And they did not stop once; they kept walking about the endless avenues of the park, now mounting a hill and admiring the view as they went, and now going down into the valley, and getting hidden in the thick shadows,—and all the while arm-in-arm. At times Sanin felt positively irritated; he had never walked so long with Gemma, his darling Gemma . . . but this lady had simply taken possession of him, and there was no escape! 'Aren't you tired?' he said to her more than once. 'I never get tired,' she answered. Now and then they met other people walking in the
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