Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume XI).djvu/241

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THE TORRENTS OF SPRING

Maria Nikolaevna simply shrugged her shoulders.


The same day, two hours later, Sanin was standing in his own room before her, like one distraught, ruined.. . .

'Where are you going, dear?' she asked him. 'To Paris, or to Frankfort?'

'I am going where you will be, and will be with you till you drive me away,' he answered with despair and pressed close to him the hands of his sovereign. She freed her hands, laid them on his head, and clutched at his hair with her fingers. She slowly turned over and twisted the unresisting hair, drew herself up, her lips curled with triumph, while her eyes, wide and clear, almost white, expressed nothing but the ruthlessness and glutted joy of conquest. The hawk, as it clutches a captured bird, has eyes like that.


XLIII

This was what Dimitri Sanin remembered when in the stillness of his room turning over his old papers he found among them a garnet cross. The events we have described rose clearly and consecutively before his mental

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