a
piercing voice, interrupting Olenin.

'It seems Vanyusha was right!' thought Olenin. "A Tartar would be
nobler",' and followed by Granny Ulitka's abuse he went out of the hut.
As he was leaving, Maryanka, still wearing only her pink smock, but
with her forehead covered down to her eyes by a white kerchief,
suddenly slipped out from the passage past him. Pattering rapidly down
the steps with her bare feet she ran from the porch, stopped, and
looking round hastily with laughing eyes at the young man, vanished
round the corner of the hut.

Her firm youthful step, the untamed look of the eyes glistening from
under the white kerchief, and the firm stately build of the young
beauty, struck Olenin even more powerfully than before. 'Yes, it must
be SHE,' he thought, and troubling his head still less about the
lodgings, he kept looking round at Maryanka as he approached Vanyusha.

'There you see, the girl too is quite savage, just like a wild filly!'
said Vanyusha, who though still busy with the luggage wagon had now
cheered up a bit. 'LA FAME!' he added in a loud triumphant voice and
burst out laughing.

Chapter XI

Towards evening the master of the house returned from his fishing, and
having learnt that the cadet would pay for the lodging, pacified the
old woman and satisfied Vanyusha's demands.

Everything was arranged in the new quarters. Their hosts moved into the
winter hut and let their summer hut to the cadet for three rubles a
month. Olenin had something to eat and went to sleep. Towards evening
he woke up, washed and made himself tidy, dined, and having lit a
cigarette sat down by the window that looked onto the street. It was
cooler. The slanting shadow of the hut with its ornamental gables fell
across the dusty road and even bent upwards at the base of the wall of
the house opposite. The steep reed-thatched roof of that house shone in
the rays of the setting sun. The air grew fresher. Everything was
peaceful in the village. The soldiers had settled down and become
quiet. The herds had not yet been driven home and the people had not
returned from their work.

Olenin's lodging was situated almost at the end of the village. At rare
intervals, from somewhere far beyond the Terek in those parts whence
Olenin had just come (the Chechen or the Kumytsk plain), came muffled
sounds of firing. Olenin was feeling very well contented after three
months of bivouac life. His newly washed face was fresh and his