'It's really curious,' Maria Nikolaevna began all at once. 'A man informs one and in such a calm voice, "I am going to get married"; but no one calmly says to one, "I'm going to throw myself in the water." And yet what difference is there? It's curious, really.'

Annoyance got the upper hand of Sanin. 'There's a great difference, Maria Nikolaevna! It's not dreadful at all to throw oneself in the water if one can swim; and besides ... as to the strangeness of marriages, if you come to that ...'

He stopped short abruptly and bit his tongue.

Maria Nikolaevna slapped her open hand with her fan.

'Go on, Dimitri Pavlovitch, go on—I know what you were going to say. "If it comes to that, my dear madam, Maria Nikolaevna Polozov," you were going to say, "anything more curious than your marriage it would be impossible to conceive.... I know your husband well, from a child!" That's what you were going to say, you who can swim!'

'Excuse me,' Sanin was beginning....

'Isn't it the truth? Isn't it the truth?' Maria Nikolaevna pronounced insistently.

'Come, look me in the face and tell me I was wrong!'

Sanin did not know what to do with his eyes. 'Well, if you like; it's the truth, if you absolutely insist upon it,' he said at last.

Maria Nikolaevna shook her head. 'Quite so, quite so. Well, and did you ask yourself, you who can swim, what could be the reason of such a strange ... step on the part of a woman, not poor ... and not a fool ... and not ugly? All that does not interest you, perhaps, but no matter. I'll tell you the reason not this minute, but directly the entr'acte is over. I am in continual uneasiness for fear some one should come in....'

Maria Nikolaevna had hardly uttered this last word when the outer door actually was half opened, and into the box was thrust a head—red, oily, perspiring, still young, but toothless; with sleek long hair, a pendent nose, huge ears like a bat's, with gold spectacles on inquisitive dull eyes, and a pince-nez over the spectacles. The head looked round, saw Maria Nikolaevna, gave a nasty grin, nodded.... A scraggy neck craned in after it....

Maria Nikolaevna shook her handkerchief at it. 'I'm not at home! Ich bin nicht zu Hause, Herr P....! Ich bin nicht zu Hause.... Ksh-sk! ksh-sh-sh!'

The head was disconcerted, gave a forced laugh, said with a sort of sob, in imitation of Liszt, at whose feet he had once reverently grovelled, 'Sehr gut, sehr gut!' and vanished.

'What is that object?' inquired Sanin.

'Oh, a Wiesbaden critic. A literary man or a flunkey, as you like. He is in the pay of a local speculator here, and so is bound to praise everything and be ecstatic over every one, though for his part he is soaked through and through with the nastiest venom, to which he does not dare to give vent. I am afraid he's an awful scandalmonger; he'll run at once to tell every one I'm in the theatre. Well, what does it matter?'