'It's really curious,' Maria Nikolaevna began all at once. 'A man informs one and in such a calm voice, "I am going to get married"; but no one calmly says to one, "I 'm going to throw myself in the water." And yet what difference is there? It's curious, really.'
Annoyance got the upper hand of Sanin. 'There's a great difference, Maria Nikolaevna! It's not dreadful at all to throw oneself in the water if one can swim; and besides . . . as to the strangeness of marriages, if you come to that . . .'
He stopped short abruptly and bit his tongue.
Maria Nikolaevna slapped her open hand with her fan.
'Go on, Dimitri Pavlovitch, go on—I know what you were going to say. "If it comes to that, my dear madam, Maria Nikolaevna Polozov," you were going to say, "anything more curious than your marriage it would be impossible to conceive. . . . I know your husband well, from a child!" That's what you were going to say, you who can swim!'
'Excuse me,' Sanin was beginning.. . .
'Isn't it the truth? Isn't it the truth?' Maria Nikolaevna pronounced insistently. 'Come, look me in the face and tell me I was wrong!'
Sanin did not know what to do with his eyes.
204
