Sasha shrugged his shoulders and said:
“You’re always spruce. Well, let’s begin to work. Have you got any nails?”
“Wait a bit,” replied Liudmilla. “Sit still a moment with me. You seem as if you had come on business and found it a bore to talk to me.”
Sasha flushed and said tenderly:
“Dear Liudmillotchka, I would like to sit with you as long as you want, until you drove me out, but I’ve got my lessons to do.”
Liudmilla sighed and said slowly:
“You’re getting handsomer, Sasha.”
Sasha reddened, laughed and protruded the end of his curled-up tongue.
“What a thing to say! You might think I was a girl from the way you talk.”
“A beautiful face, but what kind of body? You might show it, at least to the waist,” entreated Liudmilla caressingly, and put her arm round his shoulder.
“What an idea!” said Sasha, ashamed and vexed at the same time.
“Why, what’s the matter?” asked Liudmilla in a different voice. “What have you got to hide?”
“Someone might come,” said Sasha.
“Who’ll come in?” said Liudmilla as gaily and carelessly as before.
“We can lock the door and then no one will come in.”
Liudmilla walked quickly up to the door and bolted it. Sasha felt that Liudmilla was serious. He flushed so deeply that little drops of perspiration came out on his forehead and he said:
“We oughtn’t to do it, Liudmillotchka.”
“Stupid! Why not?” asked Liudmilla in a persuasive voice.
She pulled Sasha to her and began to undo his blouse. Sasha resisted and caught her wrists. His face looked frightened—and an equal shame possessed him, and these emotions made him feel suddenly weak. Liudmilla contracted her eyebrows and began to undress him determinedly. She took off his belt and somehow pulled off his blouse. Sasha resisted more and more desperately. They tussled with each other about the room, stumbling against tables and chairs. A pungent scent came from Liudmilla, intoxicated Sasha and weakened him.
With a quick thrust against his chest Liudmilla pushed Sasha on to the sofa. A button flew off from the shirt she was pulling at. Liudmilla bared Sasha’s shoulder, and began to pull his arm out of the sleeve. Sasha resisted and accidently struck Liudmilla’s cheek with his hand. He did not want to strike her, but the blow fell hard on Liudmilla’s cheek. Liudmilla shook, staggered, her cheeks went a violent red, but she did not let go of Sasha.
“You wicked boy to fight!” she exclaimed in a choking voice.
Sasha felt distressed, dropped his arms and looked guiltily at the white marks of his fingers on Liudmilla’s left cheek. Liudmilla took advantage of his confusion. She quickly pulled the shirt from both shoulders to his elbows. Sasha recovered himself, tried to get away from her but only made things worse—Liudmilla pulled the sleeves off his arms and his shirt fell down to his waist. Sasha felt cold, and a new flood of shame, hard and pitiless, made his head whirl. He was now naked to the waist. Liudmilla held his arms tightly and patted his back with her trembling hand, looking at the same time into his downcast, strangely gleaming eyes under their blue-black eyebrows.
Suddenly these eyelashes trembled, his face was wrinkled by a pitiful, childish grimace, and he began to sob.
“You wicked girl!” he exclaimed in a sobbing voice. “Let me go!”
“Crybaby!” said Liudmilla angrily, and pushed him away.
Sasha turned away, drying his tears on the palms of his hands. He felt ashamed because he was crying. He tried to hold back his tears. Liudmilla looked eagerly at his naked back.
“How much beauty there is in the world!” she thought. “People hide so much beauty from themselves. Why?”
Sasha, shrinking ashamedly with his naked shoulders, tried to put on his shirt, but it only became entangled in his trembling hands and he could not get his arms into the sleeves. Sasha caught hold of his blouse—let the shirt remain as it was for the present.
“Oh, you’re afraid for your property. No, I shan’t steal it!” said Liudmilla in a loud, angry voice, ringing with tears.
She threw him the belt impetuously, and turned towards the window. Much she wanted him, wrapped up in his grey blouse, the horrid boy!
Sasha quickly put on his blouse, somehow arranged his shirt and looked at Liudmilla cautiously, indecisively and shamefacedly. He saw that she was wiping her cheeks with her fingers; he walked up to her timidly and looked into her face—and the tears which were trickling down her cheeks weakened him into pity—and he felt no longer ashamed and angry.
“Why are you crying, dear Liudmillotchka?” he asked quietly.
And suddenly he flushed—he remembered that he had struck her.
“I hit you—forgive me! I didn’t do it on purpose,” he said timidly.
“Are you afraid you’ll melt away, you silly boy, that you won’t sit with your shoulders naked?” said Liudmilla reproachfully. “Or are you afraid that you’ll get sunburnt, or your beauty and innocence be lost?”
“But why do you want me to do it, Liudmillotchka?” said Sasha with a grimace of embarrassment.
“Why?” said Liudmilla passionately, “because I love beauty. Because I am a pagan, a sinner. I ought to have been born in ancient Athens. I love flowers, perfumes, brightly coloured clothes, the naked body. They say there is a soul. I don’t know, I’ve never seen it. And what is it to me? Let me die altogether like an Undine, let me melt away like a cloud under the sun. I love the body, the strong, agile, naked body, which is capable of enjoyment.”
“Yes, but it can suffer also,” said Sasha quietly.
“And to suffer is also good,” whispered Liudmilla. “There is sweetness in pain—if only to feel the body, to see its nakedness and bodily beauty.”
“But it is shameful to be without clothes,” said Sasha timidly.
Liudmilla impetuously threw herself on her knees before him. She kissed his hands and whispered breathlessly:
“My dear, my idol, divine boy, just for a moment, only for a moment, let me see your
