cognized from afar Maryanka's blue smock among the rows of vine, and,
picking grapes on his way, he approached her. His highly excited dog
also now and then seized a low-hanging cluster of grapes in his
slobbering mouth. Maryanka, her face flushed, her sleeves rolled up,
and her kerchief down below her chin, was rapidly cutting the heavy
clusters and laying them in a basket. Without letting go of the vine
she had hold of, she stopped to smile pleasantly at him and resumed her
work. Olenin drew near and threw his gun behind his back to have his
hands free. 'Where are your people? May God aid you! Are you alone?' he
meant to say but did not say, and only raised his cap in silence.

He was ill at ease alone with Maryanka, but as if purposely to torment
himself he went up to her.

'You'll be shooting the women with your gun like that,' said Maryanka.

'No, I shan't shoot them.'

They were both silent.

Then after a pause she said: 'You should help me.'

He took out his knife and began silently to cut off the clusters. He
reached from under the leaves low down a thick bunch weighing about
three pounds, the grapes of which grew so close that they flattened
each other for want of space. He showed it to Maryanka.

'Must they all be cut? Isn't this one too green?'

'Give it here.'

Their hands touched. Olenin took her hand, and she looked at him
smiling.

'Are you going to be married soon?' he asked.

She did not answer, but turned away with a stern look.

'Do you love Lukashka?'

'What's that to you?'

'I envy him!'

'Very likely!' 'No really. You are so beautiful!'

And he suddenly felt terribly ashamed of having said it, so commonplace
did the words seem to him. He flushed, lost control of himself, and
seized both her hands.

'Whatever I am, I'm not for you. Why do you make fun of me?' replied
Maryanka, but her look showed how certainly she knew he was not making
fun.

'Making fun? If you only knew how I--'

The words sounded still more commonplace, they accorded still less with
what he felt, but yet he continued, 'I don't know what I would not do
for you--'

'Leave me alone, you pitch!'

But her face, her shining eyes, her swelling bosom, her shapely legs,
said something quite different. It seemed to him that she understood
how petty were all things he had said, but that she was superior to
such considerations. It seemed to him she had long known all he wished
and was not able to tell her, but wa