Maria Nikolaevna knew how to tell a story ... a rare gift in a woman, and especially in a Russian one! She did not restrict herself in her expressions; her countrywomen received particularly severe treatment at her hands. Sanin was more than once set laughing by some bold and well-directed word. Above all, Maria Nikolaevna had no patience with hypocrisy, cant, and humbug. She discovered it almost everywhere. She, as it were, plumed herself on and boasted of the humble surroundings in which she had begun life. She told rather queer anecdotes of her relations in the days of her childhood, spoke of herself as quite as much of a clodhopper as Natalya Kirilovna Narishkin. It became apparent to Sanin that she had been through a great deal more in her time than the majority of women of her age.

Polozov ate meditatively, drank attentively, and only occasionally cast first on his wife, then on Sanin, his lightish, dim-looking, but, in reality, very keen eyes.

'What a clever darling you are!' cried Maria Nikolaevna, turning to him; 'how well you carried out all my commissions in Frankfort! I could give you a kiss on your forehead for it, but you're not very keen after kisses.'

'I'm not,' responded Polozov, and he cut a pine-apple with a silver knife.

Maria Nikolaevna looked at him and drummed with her fingers on the table. 'So our bet's on, isn't it?' she said significantly. 'Yes, it's on.'

'All right. You'll lose it.'

Polozov stuck out his chin. 'Well, this time you mustn't be too sanguine, Maria Nikolaevna, maybe you will lose.'

'What is the bet? May I know?' asked Sanin.

'No ... not now,' answered Maria Nikolaevna, and she laughed.

It struck seven. The waiter announced that the carriage was ready. Polozov saw his wife out, and at once waddled back to his easy-chair.

'Mind now! Don't forget the letter to the overseer,' Maria Nikolaevna shouted to him from the hall.

'I'll write, don't worry yourself. I'm a business-like person.'

XXXIX

In the year 1840, the theatre at Wiesbaden was a poor affair even externally, and its company, for affected and pitiful mediocrity, for studious and vulgar commonplaceness, not one hair's-breadth above the level, which might be regarded up to now as the normal one in all German theatres, and which has been displayed in perfection lately by the company in Carlsruhe, under the 'illustrious' direction of Herr Devrient. At the back of the box taken for her 'Serenity Madame von Polozov' (how the waiter devised the means of getting it, God knows, he can hardly have really bribed the stadt-director!) was a little room, with sofas all round it; before she went into the box, Maria Nikolaevna asked Sanin to draw up the screen that shut the box off from the theatre.

'I don't want to be seen,' she said, 'or else they'll be swarming round directly, you know.' She made him sit down beside her with his back to the house so that the box seemed to be empty. The orchestra played the overture from the Marriage of Figaro. The curtain rose, the play began.

It was one of those numerous home-raised products in which well-read but talentless authors, in choice, but dead language, studiously and cautiously enunciated some 'profound' or 'vital and palpitating' idea, portrayed a so-called tragic conflict, and produced dulness ... an Asiatic dulness, like Asiatic cholera. Maria Nikolaevna listened patiently to half an act, but when the first lover, discovering the treachery of his mistress (he was dressed in a cinnamon-coloured coat with 'puffs' and a plush collar, a striped waistcoat with mother-of-pearl buttons, green trousers with straps of varnished leather, and white chamois leather gloves), when this lover pressed both fists to his bosom, and poking his two elbows out at an acute angle, howled like a dog, Maria Nikolaevna could not stand it.

'The humblest French actor in the humblest little provincial town acts better and more naturally than the highest German celebrity,' she cried in indignation; and she moved away and sat down in the little room at the back. 'Come here,' she said to Sanin, patting the sofa beside her. 'Let's talk.'

Sanin obeyed.

Maria Nikolaevna glanced at him. 'Ah, I see you're as soft as silk! Your wife will have an easy time of it with you. That buffoon,' she went on, pointing with her fan towards the howling actor (he was acting the part of a tutor), 'reminded me of my young days; I, too, was in love with a teacher. It was my first ... no, my second passion. The first time I fell in love with a young monk of the Don monastery. I was twelve years old. I only saw him on Sundays.