Chapter XXIII - Page 2

said Sanine gently, as taking hold of Novikoff's shoulders he pushed him towards the door.

"Yes ... I ..." murmured the latter.

A sudden impulse to embrace Sanine almost overcame him, but he dared not and could but glance at him with tearful eyes. It was dark in the warm, fragrant garden, and the trunks of the trees formed Gothic arches against the pale green of the sky.

A faint mist hovered above the parched surface of the lawn. It was as if an unseen presence wandered along the silent walks and amid the motionless trees, at whose approach the slumbering leaves and blossoms softly trembled. The sunset still flamed in the west behind the river which flowed in shining curves through the dark meadows. At the edge of the stream sat Lida. Her graceful figure bending forward above the water seemed like that of some mournful spirit in the dusk. The sense of confidence inspired by the voice of her brother forsook her as quickly as it had come, and once more shame and fear overwhelmed her. She was obsessed by the thought that she had no right to happiness, nor yet to live. She spent whole days in the garden, book in hand, unable to look her mother in the face. A thousand times she said to herself that her mother's anguish would be as nothing to what she herself was now suffering, yet whenever she approached her parent her voice faltered, and in her eyes there was a guilty look. Her blushes and strange confusion of manner at last aroused her mother's suspicion, to avoid whose searching glances and anxious questionings Lida preferred to spend her days in solitude. Thus, on this evening she was seated by the river, watching the sunset and brooding over her grief. Life, as it seemed to her, was still incomprehensible. Her view of it was blurred as by some hideous phantom. A series of books which she had read had served to give her greater freedom of thought. As she believed, her conduct was not only natural but almost worthy of praise. She had brought harm to no one thereby, only providing herself and another with sensual enjoyment. Without such enjoyment there would be no youth, and life itself would be barren and desolate as a leafless tree in autumn.

The thought that her union with a man had not been sanctioned by the church seemed to her ridiculous. By the free mind of a man such claims had long been swept aside. She ought really to find joy in this new life, just as a flower on some bright morning rejoices at the touch of the pollen borne to it on the breeze. Yet she felt unutterably degraded, and baser than the basest.

All such grand, noble ideas and eternal verities melted like wax at the thought of her day of infamy that was at hand. And instead of trampling underfoot the folk that she despised, her one thought was how best she might avoid or deceive them.

While concealing her grief from others, Lida felt herself attracted to Novikoff as a flower to the sunlight. The suggestion