Lialia looked up shyly at him, and her lips trembled. Without a word she pulled her hand away, crossed the room and opened the glass door leading to the balcony. Riasantzeff watched her, calmly, but with slight astonishment. “My Ludmilla Nicolaijevna is cross,” he said to Nicolai Yegorovitch with serio-comic gravity of manner. The latter burst out laughing. “You had better go and make it up.” “There’s nothing else to be done!” sighed Riasantzeff, in droll fashion, as he followed Lialia on to the balcony. It was still raining. The monotonous sound of falling drops filled the air; but the sky seemed clearer now, and there was a break in the clouds. Lialia, her cheek propped against one of the cold, damp pillars of the veranda, let the rain beat upon her bare head, so that her hair was wet through. “My princess is displeased … Lialitschka!” said Riasantzeff, as he drew her closer to him, and lightly kissed moist, fragrant hair. At this touch, so intimate and familiar, something seemed to melt in Lialia’s breast, and without knowing what she did, she flung her arms round her lover’s strong neck as, amid a shower of kisses, she murmured: “I am very, very angry with you! You’re a bad man!” All the while she kept thinking that after all there was nothing so bad, or awful, or irreparable as she had supposed. What did it matter? All that she wanted was to love and be loved by this big, handsome man. Afterwards, at table, it was painful to her to notice Yourii’s look of amazement, and, when the chance came, she whispered to him, “It’s awful of me, I know!” at which he only smiled awkwardly. Yourii was really pleased that the matter should have ended happily like this, while yet affecting to despise such an attitude of bourgeois complacency and toleration. He withdrew to his room, remaining there alone until the evening, and as, before sunset, the sky grew clear, he took his gun, intending to shoot in the same place where he and Riasantzeff had been yesterday. After the rain, the marsh seemed full of new life. Many strange sounds were now audible, and the grasses waved as if stirred by some secret vital force. Frogs croaked lustily in a chorus; now and again some birds uttered a sharp discordant cry; while at no great distance, yet out of range, ducks could be heard cackling in the wet reeds. Yourii, however, felt no desire to shoot, but he shouldered his gun and turned homeward, listening to sounds of crystalline clearness in the grey calm twilight. “How beautiful!” thought he. “All is beautiful; man alone is vile!” Far away he saw the little fire burning in the melon-field, and ere long by its light he recognized the faces of Kousma and Sanine. “What does he always come here for?” thought Yourii, surprised and curious.