I have said that my passion dated from that day; I might have added that my sufferings too dated from the same day.
Away from Zinaida I pined; nothing was to my mind; everything went wrong with me; I spent whole days thinking intensely about her ... I pined when away,... but in her presence I was no better off.
I was jealous; I was conscious of my insignificance; I was stupidly sulky or stupidly abject, and, all the same, an invincible force drew me to her, and I could not help a shudder of delight whenever I stepped through the doorway of her room.
Zinaida guessed at once that I was in love with her, and indeed I never even thought of concealing it.
She amused herself with my passion, made a fool of me, petted and tormented me.
There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another, and I was like wax in Zinaida's hands; though, indeed, I was not the only one in love with her.
All the men who visited the house were crazy over her, and she kept them all in leading-strings at her feet.
It amused her to arouse their hopes and then their fears, to turn them round her finger (she used to call it knocking their heads together), while they never dreamed of offering resistance and eagerly submitted to her.
About her whole being, so full of life and beauty, there was a peculiarly bewitching mixture of slyness and carelessness, of artificiality and simplicity, of composure and frolicsomeness; about everything she did or said, about every action of hers, there clung a delicate, fine charm, in which an individual power was manifest at work.
And her face was ever changing, working too; it expressed, almost at the same time, irony, dreaminess, and passion.