Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Other Stories / Леди Макбет Мценского уезда и другие повести. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“So you pined for me, Seryozha?”

“How I pined!”

“How did you pine? Tell me about it.”

“How can I tell about it? Is it possible to describe how you pine? I was heartsick.”

“Why is it, Seryozha, that I didn’t feel you were suffering over me? They say you can feel it.”

Sergei was silent.

“And why did you sing songs, if you were longing for me? Eh? Didn’t I hear you singing in the gallery?” Katerina Lvovna went on asking tenderly.

“So what if I sang songs? A mosquito also sings all his life, but it’s not for joy,” Sergei answered drily.

There was a pause. Katerina Lvovna was filled with the highest rapture from these confessions of Sergei.

She wanted to talk, but Sergei sulked and kept silent.

“Look, Seryozha, what paradise, what paradise!” Katerina Lvovna exclaimed, looking through the dense branches of the blossoming apple tree that covered her at the clear blue sky in which there hung a fine full moon.

The moonlight coming through the leaves and flowers of the apple tree scattered the most whimsical bright spots over Katerina Lvovna’s face and whole recumbent body; the air was still; only a light, warm breeze faintly stirred the sleepy leaves and spread the subtle fragrance of blossoming herbs and trees. There was a breath of something languorous, conducive to laziness, sweetness, and obscure desires.

Receiving no answer, Katerina Lvovna fell silent again and went on looking at the sky through the pale pink apple blossoms.

A golden night! Silence, light, fragrance, and beneficent, vivifying warmth. Far across the ravine, beyond the garden, someone struck up a resounding song; by the fence, in the bird-cherry thicket, a nightingale trilled and loudly throbbed; in a cage on a tall pole a sleepy quail began to rave, and a fat horse sighed languidly behind the stable wall, and outside the garden fence a merry pack of dogs raced noiselessly across the green and disappeared into the dense black shadow of the half-ruined old salt depots.

Katerina Lvovna propped herself on her elbow and looked at the tall garden grass; and the grass played with the moonbeams, broken up by the flowers and leaves of the trees.