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One day I was sitting on the wall looking into the distance and listening to the ringing of the bells...

Suddenly something floated up to me – not a breath of wind and not a shiver, but as it were a whiff of fragrance – as it were, a sense of some one's being near...

I looked down.

Below, on the path, in a light greyish gown, with a pink parasol on her shoulder, was Zinaida, hurrying along.

She caught sight of me, stopped, and pushing back the brim of her straw hat, she raised her velvety eyes to me.

'What are you doing up there at such a height?' she asked me with a rather queer smile. 'Come,' she went on, 'you always declare you love me; jump down into the road to me if you really do love me.'

Zinaida had hardly uttered those words when I flew down, just as though some one had given me a violent push from behind.

The wall was about fourteen feet high.

I reached the ground on my feet, but the shock was so great that I could not keep my footing; I fell down, and for an instant fainted away.

When I came to myself again, without opening my eyes, I felt Zinaida beside me.

'My dear boy,' she was saying, bending over me, and there was a note of alarmed tenderness in her voice, 'how could you do it, dear; how could you obey?... You know I love you...

Get up.'

Her bosom was heaving close to me, her hands were caressing my head, and suddenly – what were my emotions at that moment – her soft, fresh lips began covering my face with kisses ... they touched my lips...

But then Zinaida probably guessed by the expression of my face that I had regained consciousness, though I still kept my eyes closed, and rising rapidly to her feet, she said: 'Come, get up, naughty boy, silly, why are you lying in the dust?' I got up.

'Give me my parasol,' said Zinaida, 'I threw it down somewhere, and don't stare at me like that ... what ridiculous nonsense! you're not hurt, are you? stung by the nettles, I daresay? Don't stare at me, I tell you...

But he doesn't understand, he doesn't answer,' she added, as though to herself...

'Go home, M'sieu' Voldemar, brush yourself, and don't dare to follow me, or I shall be angry, and never again ... '

She did not finish her sentence, but walked rapidly away, while I sat down by the side of the road ... my legs would not support me.

The nettles had stung my hands, my back ached, and my head was giddy; but the feeling of rapture I experienced then has never come a second time in my life.

It turned to a sweet ache in all my limbs and found expression at last in joyful hops and skips and shouts.

Yes, I was still a child.

I was so proud and light-hearted all that day, I so vividly retained on my face the feeling of Zinaida's kisses, with such a shudder of delight I recalled every word she had uttered, I so hugged my unexpected happiness that I felt positively afraid, positively unwilling to see her, who had given rise to these new sensations.

It seemed to me that now I could ask nothing more of fate, that now I ought to 'go, and draw a deep last sigh and die.' But, next day, when I went into the lodge, I felt great embarrassment, which I tried to conceal under a show of modest confidence, befitting a man who wishes to make it apparent that he knows how to keep a secret.

Zinaida received me very simply, without any emotion, she simply shook her finger at me and asked me, whether I wasn't black and blue? All my modest confidence and air of mystery vanished instantaneously and with them my embarrassment.

Chapter XIII

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