Chapter 25

'How is it you don't know your own lodger?' said Beletski,
addressing Maryanka.

'How is one to know him if he never comes to see us?' answered
Maryanka, with a look at Olenin.

Olenin felt frightened, he did not know of what. He flushed and,
hardly knowing what he was saying, remarked: 'I'm afraid of your
mother. She gave me such a scolding the first time I went in.'

Maryanka burst out laughing. 'And so you were frightened?' she
said, and glanced at him and turned away.

It was the first time Olenin had seen the whole of her beautiful
face. Till then he had seen her with her kerchief covering her to
the eyes. It was not for nothing that she was reckoned the beauty
of the village. Ustenka was a pretty girl, small, plump, rosy,
with merry brown eyes, and red lips which were perpetually smiling
and chattering. Maryanka on the contrary was certainly not pretty
but beautiful. Her features might have been considered too
masculine and almost harsh had it not been for her tall stately
figure, her powerful chest and shoulders, and especially the
severe yet tender expression of her long dark eyes which were
darkly shadowed beneath their black brows, and for the gentle
expression of her mouth and smile. She rarely smiled, but her
smile was always striking. She seemed to radiate virginal strength
and health. All the girls were good-looking, but they themselves
and Beletski, and the orderly when he brought in the spice-cakes,
all involuntarily gazed at Maryanka, and anyone addressing the
girls was sure to address her. She seemed a proud and happy queen
among them.

Beletski, trying to keep up the spirit of the party, chattered
incessantly, made the girls hand round chikhir, fooled about with
them, and kept making improper remarks in French about Maryanka's
beauty to Olenin, calling her 'yours' (la votre), and advising him
to behave as he did himself. Olenin felt more and more
uncomfortable. He was devising an excuse to get out and run away
when Beletski announced that Ustenka, whose saint's day it was,
must offer chikhir to everybody with a kiss. She consented on
condition that they should put money on her plate, as is the
custom at weddings.

'What fiend brought me to this disgusting feast?' thought Olenin,
rising to go away.

'Where are you off to?'

'I'll fetch some tobacco,' he said, meaning to escape, but
Beletski seized his hand.

'I have some money,' he said to him in French.

'One can't go away, one has to pay here,' thought Olenin bitterly,
vexed at his own awkwardness. 'Can't I really behave like
Beletski? I ought not to have come, but once I am here I must not
spoil their fun. I must drink like a Cossack,' and taking the
wooden