o give it and get away?'

Chapter XXV

'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 h