if you'll give me what I
like--Oh, how I will love you!"

"For the present?" asked Foma, smiling suspiciously. "You ought to love
me anyway."

She looked at him calmly and, after a moment's thought, said resolutely:

"It's too soon to love you anyway. I will not lie. Why should I lie
to you? I am telling you frankly. I love you for money, for presents.
Because aside from money, men have nothing. They cannot give anything
more than money. Nothing of worth. I know it well already. One can love
merely so. Yes, wait a little--I'll know you better and then, perhaps, I
may love you free of charge. And meanwhile, you mustn't take me amiss. I
need much money in my mode of life."

Foma listened to her, smiled and now and then quivered from the nearness
of her sound, well-shaped body. Zvantzev's sour, cracked and boring
voice was falling on his ears. "I don't like it. I cannot understand the
beauty of this renowned Russian song. What is it that sounds in it? Eh?
The howl of a wolf. Something hungry, wild. Eh! it's the groan of a sick
dog--altogether something beastly. There's nothing cheerful, there's no
chic to it; there are no live and vivifying sounds in it. No, you ought
to hear what and how the French peasant sings. Ah! or the Italian."

"Excuse me, Ivan Nikolayevich," cried Ookhtishchev, agitated.

"I must agree with you, the Russian song is monotonous and gloomy. It
has not, you know, that brilliancy of culture," said the man with the
side whiskers wearily, as he sipped some wine out of his glass.

"But nevertheless, there is always a warm heart in it," put in the
red-haired lady, as she peeled an orange.

The sun was setting. Sinking somewhere far beyond the forest, on the
meadow shore, it painted the entire forest with purple tints and cast
rosy and golden spots over the dark cold water. Foma gazed in that
direction at this play of the sunbeams, watched how they quivered as
they were transposed over the placid and vast expanse of waters, and
catching fragments of conversation, he pictured to himself the words as
a swarm of dark butterflies, busily fluttering in the air. Sasha,
her head resting on his shoulder, was softly whispering into his ear
something at which he blushed and was confused, for he felt that she
was kindling in him the desire to embrace this woman and kiss her
unceasingly. Aside from her, none of those assembled there interested
him--while Zvantzev and the gentleman with the side whiskers were