Sanine calmly watched her. The shawl and her chemise had slipped when she leant on the window-sill, and partly disclosed her tender bosom, white in the moonlight.
“Men always build up a Wall of China between themselves and happiness,” he said in a low, trembling voice. Lida was terrified.
“How do you mean?” she asked faintly, her eyes still fixed on the garden for fear of encountering his. To her it seemed that something was going to happen of which one hardly dared to think. Yet she had no doubt as to what it was. It was awful, hideous, and yet interesting. Her brain was on fire; she could scarcely see, as with horror and yet with curiosity she felt hot breath against her cheek that stirred her hair and sent shivers through her frame.
“Why, like this!” replied Sanine, and his voice faltered.
As if by an electric shock, Lida started backwards and, without knowing what she did, leant over the table and blew out the light.
“It is bed-time,” she said, and shut the window.
The light having been extinguished, it seemed less dark out of doors, and Sanine’s figure was clearly discernible, his features appearing blueish in the moonlight. He stood in the long, dew-drenched grass and smiled.
Lida left the window and sat down mechanically on her bed. She trembled in every limb, unable to collect her thoughts, and the sound of Sanine’s footsteps on the grass outside set her heart beating violently.
“Am I going mad?” she asked herself in disgust. “How awful! A chance phrase like that to put such thoughts into my head! Is this erotomania? Am I really so bad, so depraved? I must have sunk very low to think of such a thing!”
Burying her face in the pillows, she wept bitterly.
“Why am I weeping?” she thought, not knowing the reason for such tears, but feeling miserable, humiliated, and unhappy. She wept because she had yielded herself to Sarudine, because she was no longer a proud, pure maiden, and because of that insulting, horrible look in her brother’s eyes. Formerly he would never have looked at her like that. It was, so she thought, because she had fallen.
But the bitterest, most harassing thought of all was that she had now become a woman, and that as long as she was young, strong, and good- looking her best powers must be at the service of men and devoted to their gratification, while the greater the enjoyment she procured for them and for herself the more would they despise her.