“Akh, Véretyeff,”--began Másha;--“you know that I do not understand how to express myself. You have told me about that Laura. But she was a woman, you see.... A woman may be pardoned for not thinking of the future.”
“When you speak, Másha,”--returned Véretyeff,--“you blush incessantly with self-love and modesty: the blood fairly flows in a crimson flood into your cheeks. I’m awfully fond of that in you.”
Márya Pávlovna looked Véretyeff straight in the eye.
“Farewell,”--she said, and threw her scarf over her head.
Véretyeff held her back. “Enough, enough. Stay!”--he cried.--“Come, why are you going? Issue your commands! Do you want me to enter the service, to become an agriculturist? Do you want me to publish romances with accompaniment for the guitar; to print a collection of poems, or of drawings; to busy myself with painting, sculpture, dancing on the rope? I’ll do anything, anything, anything you command, if only you will be satisfied with me! Come, really now, Másha, believe me.”
“You will do all that in words only, not in deeds. You declare that you will obey me....”
“You obey, but how many times have I begged you....”
“Not to drink liquor,”--she said at last.
“Ekh, Másha! And you are at it, too! My sister is worrying herself to death over that also. But, in the first place, I’m not a drunkard at all; and in the second place, do you know why I drink? Look yonder, at that swallow.... Do you see how boldly it manages its tiny body,--and hurls it wherever it wishes? Now it has soared aloft, now it has darted downward. It has even piped with joy: do you hear? So that’s why I drink, Másha, in order to feel those same sensations which that swallow experiences.... Hurl yourself whithersoever you will, soar wheresoever you take a fancy....”
“What do you mean by that? What is one to live on then?”
“But isn’t it possible to get along without liquor?”
“No, it is not; we are all damaged, rumpled. There’s passion ... it produces the same effect. That’s why I love you.”
“No, Másha, I do not love you like wine. Stay, I’ll prove it to you sometime,--when we are married, say, and go abroad together. Do you know, I am planning in advance how I shall lead you in front of the Venus of Milo. At this point it will be appropriate to say: