His legs crossed, he sat somewhere in a corner of her richly furnished drawing-room, where it was extremely difficult to walk without overturning or at least striking against something--Foma sat and watched them sternly.
Over the soft rugs she was noiselessly passing hither and thither, casting to him kind glances and smiles, while her admirers were fawning upon her, and they all, like serpents, were cleverly gliding by the various little tables, chairs, screens, flower-stands--a storehouse full of beautiful and frail things, scattered about the room with a carelessness equally dangerous to them and to Foma. But when he walked there, the rugs did not drown his footsteps, and all these things caught at his coat, trembled and fell. Beside the piano stood a sailor made of bronze, whose hand was lifted, ready to throw the life-saving ring; on this ring were ropes of wire, and these always pulled Foma by the hair. All this provoked laughter among Sophya Pavlovna and her admirers, and Foma suffered greatly, changing from heat to cold.
But he felt no less uncomfortable even when alone with her.
Greeting him with a kindly smile, she would take a seat beside him in one of the cosy corners of her drawing-room and would usually start her conversation by complaining to him of everybody:
"You wouldn't believe how glad I am to see you!" Bending like a cat, she would gaze into his eyes with her dark glance, in which something avidious would now flash up.
"I love to speak to you," she said, musically drawling her words.
"I've grown tired of all the rest of them. They're all so boring, ordinary and worn-out, while you are fresh, sincere. You don't like those people either, do you?""I can't bear them!" replied Foma, firmly.
"And me?" she asked softly.
Foma turned his eyes away from her and said, with a sigh:
"How many times have you asked me that?"
"Is it hard for you to tell me?"
"It isn't hard, but what for?"
"I must know it."
"You are making sport of me," said Foma, sternly. And she opened her eyes wide and inquired in a tone of great astonishment:
"How do I make sport of you? What does it mean to make sport?"And her face looked so angelic that he could not help believing her.
"I love you! I love you! It is impossible not to love you!" said he hotly, and immediately added sadly, lowering his voice: "But you don't need it!""There you have it!" sighed Medinskaya, satisfied, drawing back from him. "I am always extremely pleased to hear you say this, with so much youthfulness and originality. Would you like to kiss my hand?"Without saying a word he seized her thin, white little hand and carefully bending down to it, he passionately kissed it for a long time. Smiling and graceful, not in the least moved by his passion, she freed her hand from his. Pensively, she looked at him with that strange glitter in her eyes, which always confused Foma; she examined him as something rare and extremely curious, and said:
"How much strength and power and freshness of soul you possess! Do you know? You merchants are an altogether new race, an entire race with original traditions, with an enormous energy of body and soul.
Take you, for instance--you are a precious stone, and you should be polished. Oh!"Whenever she told him: "You," or "according to your merchant fashion," it seemed to Foma that she was pushing him away from her with these words. This at once saddened and offended him. He was silent, looking at her small maidenly figure, which was always somehow particularly well dressed, always sweet-scented like a flower.
Sometimes he was seized with a wild, coarse desire to embrace and kiss her. But her beauty and the fragility of her thin, supple body awakened in him a fear of breaking and disfiguring her, and her calm, caressing voice and the clear, but somewhat cautious look of her eyes chilled his passion; it seemed to him as though she were looking straight into his soul, divining all his thoughts. But these bursts of emotion were rare. Generally the youth regarded Medinskaya with adoration, admiring everything in her--her beauty, her words, her dresses. And beside this adoration there was in him a painfully keen consciousness of his remoteness from her, of her supremacy over him.
These relations were established between them within a short time;after two or three meetings Medinskaya was in full possession of the youth and she slowly began to torture him. Evidently she liked to have a healthy, strong youth at her mercy; she liked to rouse and tame the animal in him merely with her voice and glance, and confident of the power of her superiority, she found pleasure in thus playing with him. On leaving her, he was usually half-sick from excitement, bearing her a grudge, angry with himself, filled with many painful and intoxicating sensations. And about two days later he would come to undergo the same torture again.
One day he asked her timidly:
"Sophya Pavlovna! Have you ever had any children?""No."
"I thought not!" exclaimed Foma with delight.
She cast at him the look of a very naive little girl, and said:
"What made you think so? And why do you want to know whether Ihad any children or not?"
Foma blushed, and, bending his head, began to speak to her in a heavy voice, as though he was lifting every word from the ground and as though each word weighed a few puds.
"You see--a woman who--has given birth to children--such a woman has altogether different eyes.""So? What kind are they then?"
"Shameless!" Foma blurted out.
Medinskaya broke into her silver laughter, and Foma, looking at her, also began to laugh.
"Excuse me!" said he, at length. "Perhaps I've said something wrong, improper.""Oh, no, no! You cannot say anything improper. You are a pure, amiable boy. And so, my eyes are not shameless?""Yours are like an angel's!" announced Foma with enthusiasm, looking at her with beaming eyes. And she glanced at him, as she had never done before; her look was that of a mother, a sad look of love mingled with fear for the beloved.
