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.
Chapter XIII
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.