“Yes, a fine idea,” repeated Zinaïda. “Is life such a festive affair? Just look about you…. Is it nice, eh? Or do you imagine I don’t understand it, and don’t feel it? It gives me pleasure—drinking iced water; and can you seriously assure me that such a life is worth too much to be risked for an instant’s pleasure—happiness I won’t even talk about.” “Oh, very well,” remarked Lushin, “caprice and irresponsibility…. Those two words sum you up; your whole nature’s contained in those two words.” Zinaïda laughed nervously. “You’re late for the post, my dear doctor. You don’t keep a good look-out; you’re behind the times. Put on your spectacles. I’m in no capricious humour now. To make fools of you, to make a fool of myself … much fun there is in that!—and as for irresponsibility … M’sieu Voldemar,” Zinaïda added suddenly, stamping, “don’t make such a melancholy face. I can’t endure people to pity me.” She went quickly out of the room. “It’s bad for you, very bad for you, this atmosphere, young man,” Lushin said to me once more. XI On the evening of the same day the usual guests were assembled at the Zasyekins’. I was among them. The conversation turned on Meidanov’s poem. Zinaïda expressed genuine admiration of it. “But do you know what?” she said to him. “If I were a poet, I would choose quite different subjects. Perhaps it’s all nonsense, but strange ideas sometimes come into my head, especially when I’m not asleep in the early morning, when the sky begins to turn rosy and grey both at once. I would, for instance … You won’t laugh at me?” “No, no!” we all cried, with one voice. “I would describe,” she went on, folding her arms across her bosom and looking away, “a whole company of young girls at night in a great boat, on a silent river. The moon is shining, and they are all in white, and wearing garlands of white flowers, and singing, you know, something in the nature of a hymn.” “I see—I see; go on,” Meidanov commented with dreamy significance. “All of a sudden, loud clamour, laughter, torches, tambourines on the bank…. It’s a troop of Bacchantes dancing with songs and cries. It’s your business to make a picture of it, Mr. Poet;… only I should like the torches to be red and to smoke a great deal, and the Bacchantes’ eyes to gleam under their wreaths, and the wreaths to be dusky. Don’t forget the tiger-skins, too, and goblets and gold—lots of gold….” “Where ought the gold to be?” asked Meidanov, tossing back his sleek hair and distending his nostrils.