Annouchka came to meet us at the threshold of the door. I was expecting
a fresh burst of laughter, but she approached us pale, silent, her eyes
cast down.
"I have brought him back," said Gaguine, "and it is well to add that he
wished to come himself."
She looked at me with a questioning air. I put my hand out to her this
time, and pressed with fervor her cold and trembling fingers. I felt a
profound pity for her. I understood, indeed, the sides of her character
which had appeared inexplicable to me. That agitation one saw in her,
that desire of putting herself forward, joined with the fear of
appearing ridiculous, was quite clear to me now.
A weighty secret oppressed her constantly, her inexperienced _amour
propre_ came forward and receded incessantly, but her whole being sought
the truth. I understood what attracted me towards this strange young
girl: it was not only the half-savage charm bestowed upon her lovely
and graceful young figure, it was also her soul that captivated me.
Gaguine began to rummage over his portfolios; I proposed to Annouchka to
accompany me into the vineyard. She immediately consented, with a gay
and almost submissive air. We went half way down the mountain, and
seated ourselves upon a stone.
"And you were not dull without us?" she asked me.
"You were then dull without me?" I replied to her.
Annouchka looked at me slyly.
"Yes!" she said, and almost immediately began,--
"The mountains must be very beautiful. They are high, higher than the
clouds. Tell me what you saw. You have already told my brother, but I
have not heard."
"But you did not care to hear, since you went out."
"I went out because,--you see very well that I don't go out now," added
she in a tender tone; "but this morning you were angry."
"I was angry?"
"Yes!"
"Come now, why should I have been?"
"I don't know; but you were angry, and went away in the same mood. I was
very sorry to see you go away so, and I am glad to see you come back."
"And I am very glad to be back," I answered.
Annouchka shrugged her shoulders, as children do when they are pleased.
"Oh! I know it," she replied. "I used to know by the way in which my
father coughed whether he was pleased with me or not."
It was the first time that she had spoken of her father; it surprised
me.
"You loved your father very much?" I asked her; and suddenly, to my
great disgust, I felt that I blushed.
She did not answer, and blushed also.
We kept silent for some time. In the distance the smoke of a steamboat
rose up on the Rhine; we followed it with our eyes.
"And your story," she said to me in a low voice.
"Why did you sometimes begin to laugh when you saw me?" I asked her.
"I don't know. Sometimes I feel like weeping, and I begin to laugh. You
must not judge of me by the way I act. Apropos, what is that legend
about the fairy Lorelei? This is her rock that one sees here. They say
that formerly she drowned everybody, until, falling in love, she threw
herself into the Rhine. I like the story. Dame Louise knows a great many
of them; she tells them all to me. Dame Louise has a black cat with
yellow eyes."
Annouchka raised her head and shook her curls.
"Ah! how happy I am," she said. At that moment low, monotonous sounds
began to be heard at intervals,--hundreds of voices, chanting in chorus,
with cadenced interruptions, a religious song. A long procession
appeared on the road below us, with crosses and banners.
"Suppose we join them," Annouchka said to me, listening to the chants
that came to us growing fainter and fainter by degrees.
"You are then very religious?"
"One should go to some place very far away for devotion, or to
accomplish a perilous work!" she added. "Otherwise the days slip
by--life passes uselessly."
"You are ambitious," I said to her. "You do not wish to end your life
without leaving behind some traces of your existence?"
"Is it then impossible?"
"Impossible!" I was going to answer; but I looked at the eyes that shone
with ardor, and confined myself to saying, "Try!"
"Tell me," after a moment's silence, during which indescribable shades
passed over her countenance, which again had become pale. "Then that
lady pleases you very much? You know, the one whose health my brother
drank at the ruins the day after you met us?"