“What’s the matter, my dear?” she said, as she opened the door. “Have you come to say good-night. God bless you! Where is Nikolai Andreevich?”
But she was terrified when she saw Marfinka’s face.
“Sit down in the armchair,” she said, but Marfinka clung to her.
“Lie down, Grandmother, and I will sit on the bed beside you. I will tell you everything, but please put out the light.”
Then Marfinka began to relate how she had gone with Vikentev into the park to hear the nightingales sing, how she had first objected because it was so dark.
“Not with you,” and they had gone on hand in hand.
“How dark it is! I won’t go any farther. Don’t take hold of my hand!” She went on involuntarily, although Vikentev had loosed her hand, her heart beating faster and faster. “I am afraid, I won’t go a step farther.” She drew closer to him all the same, terrified by the crackling of the twigs under her feet.
“Here we will wait. Listen!” he whispered.
The nightingale sang, and Marfinka felt herself enveloped in the warm breath of night. At intervals her hand sought Vikentev’s, but when he touched hers she drew it back.
“How lovely, Marfa Vassilievna! What an enchanted night!”
“Marfa Vassilievna,” he whispered, “something so good, so wonderful is happening to me, something I have never felt before. It is as if everything in me was astir. At this moment,” he went on as she remained silent, “I should like to fling myself on horseback, and ride, ride, till I had no breathe left, or fling myself into the Volga and swim to the opposite bank. Do you feel anything like that?”
“Let us go away from here. Grandmother will be angry.”
“Just a minute more. How the nightingale does sing! What does he sing?”
“Just what I should like to say to you, but don’t know how to say.”
“How do you know what he sings? Can you speak nightingale language?”
“He is singing of love, of my love for you,” and startled by his own words he drew her hand to his lips and covered it with kisses.
She drew it back, and ran at full speed down the avenue towards the house; on the steps she waited a moment to take breath.
“Not a step farther,” she cried breathlessly, clinging to the doorpost as he overtook her. “Go home.”
“Listen, Marfa Vassilievna, my angel,” he cried, falling on his knees. “On my knees I swear....”