And of such steady guests Pasha has a
multitude; many are with perfect sincerity, even though bestially,
in love with her, and even not so long ago two, almost at the same
time, offered to set her up: a Georgian--a clerk in a store of
Cakhetine wines, and some railroad agent, a very proud and very
poor nobleman, with shirt cuffs the colour of a cabbage rose, and
with an eye which had been replaced by a black circle on an
elastic. Pasha, passive in everything save her impersonal
sensuality, would go with anybody who might call her, but the
administration of the house vigilantly guards its interests in
her. A near insanity already flits over her lovely face, in her
half-closed eyes, always smiling with some heady, blissful, meek,
bashful and unseemly smile, in her languorous, softened, moist
lips, which she is constantly licking; in her short, quiet laugh--
the laugh of an idiot. Yet at the same time she--this veritable
victim of the social temperament--in everyday life is very good-
natured, yielding, entirely uncovetous and is very much ashamed of
her inordinate passion.
Pages:
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73