Part 15 (1/2)

The general smiled.

'He keeps very quiet ... one can see he's afraid of compromising himself.'

Irina too smiled; it was a very different smile from her husband's.

'Better keep quiet than talk ... as some people talk.'

'_Attrape!_' answered Ratmirov with feigned submissiveness. 'Joking apart, he has a very interesting face. Such a ... concentrated expression ... and his whole bearing.... Yes....' The general straightened his cravat, and bending his head stared at his own moustache. 'He's a republican, I imagine, of the same sort as your other friend, Mr. Potugin; that's another of your clever fellows who are dumb.'

Irina's brows were slowly raised above her wide open clear eyes, while her lips were tightly pressed together and faintly curved.

'What's your object in saying that, Valerian Vladimiritch,' she remarked, as though sympathetically. 'You are wasting your arrows on the empty air.... We are not in Russia, and there is no one to hear you.'

Ratmirov was stung.

'That's not merely my opinion, Irina Pavlovna,' he began in a voice suddenly guttural; 'other people too notice that that gentleman has the air of a conspirator.'

'Really? who are these other people?'

'Well, Boris for instance----'

'What? was it necessary for him too to express his opinion?'

Irina shrugged her shoulders as though shrinking from the cold, and slowly pa.s.sed the tips of her fingers over them.

'Him ... yes, him. Allow me to remark, Irina Pavlovna, that you seem angry; and you know if one is angry----'

'Am I angry? Oh, what for?'

'I don't know; possibly you have been disagreeably affected by the observation I permitted myself to make in reference to----'

Ratmirov stammered.

'In reference to?' Irina repeated interrogatively. 'Ah, if you please, no irony, and make haste. I'm tired and sleepy.'

She took a candle from the table. 'In reference to----?'

'Well, in reference to this same Mr. Litvinov; since there's no doubt now that you take a great interest in him.'

Irina lifted the hand in which she was holding the candlestick, till the flame was brought on a level with her husband's face, and attentively, almost with curiosity, looking him straight in the face, she suddenly burst into laughter.

'What is it?' asked Ratmirov scowling.

Irina went on laughing.

'Well, what is it?' he repeated, and he stamped his foot.

He felt insulted, wounded, and at the same time against his will he was impressed by the beauty of this woman, standing so lightly and boldly before him ... she was tormenting him. He saw everything, all her charms--even the pink reflection of the delicate nails on her slender finger-tips, as they tightly clasped the dark bronze of the heavy candlestick--even that did not escape him ... while the insult cut deeper and deeper into his heart. And still Irina laughed.