She was charming to us. I can see her now, leaning
her chin on her hands; looking at us, the colour, shell-pink, coming
and going delicately in her cheek, like flame behind china. Her
delicacy, her height, her slender figure, her wide childish eyes, her
charmingly ugly large mouth and short nose, her black hair, the appeal
of her ignorance and strength and credulity--ah! she won our hearts
simply whenever she pleased! Of course we disliked her when she was
rude to us, our self-respect demanded it, but let her "come round" and
round we came too.
Her treatment of Semyonov was strange. She was quite fearless,
laughing at his temper, his sarcasm, rebuking his selfishness and bad
manners, avoiding his coarse and unhesitating love-making, and above
all, trusting him in the oddest way as though, in spite of his faults,
she placed all her reliance on him and knew that he would not fail
her. Nothing annoyed him more than her behaviour to Trenchard. It
would, of course, be absurd to say that he was jealous of Trenchard;
he despised the man too deeply and was, himself, too sure of his lady
to know jealousy; but he was irritated by the attention paid to him,
irritated even by the attention he himself paid to him.
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