overwhelmed by the lights, the bright colours, the music, the noise, and looking round the
room, thought, "Oh, how lovely!" She at once distinguished in the crowd all her
acquaintances, every one she had met before at parties or on picnics -- all the officers, the
teachers, the lawyers, the officials, the landowners, His Excellency, Artynov, and the ladies
of the highest standing, dressed up and very décollettées, handsome and ugly, who had
already taken up their positions in the stalls and pavilions of the charity bazaar, to begin
selling things for the benefit of the poor. A huge officer in epaulettes -- she had been
introduced to him in Staro-Kievsky Street when she was a schoolgirl, but now she could not
remember his name -- seemed to spring from out of the ground, begging her for a waltz, and
she flew away from her husband, feeling as though she were floating away in a sailing-boat
in a violent storm, while her husband was left far away on the shore. She danced
passionately, with fervour, a waltz, then a polka and a quadrille, being snatched by one
partner as soon as she was left by another, dizzy with music and the noise, mixing Russian
with French, lisping, laughing, and with no thought of her husband or anything else. She
excited great admiration among the men -- that was evident, and indeed it could not have
been otherwise; she was breathless with excitement, felt thirsty, and convulsively clutched
her fan. Pyotr Leontyitch, her father, in a crumpled dress-coat that smelt of benzine, came
up to her, offering her a plate of pink ice.
"You are enchanting this evening," he said, looking at her rapturously, "and I have never so
much regretted that you were in such a hurry to get married. . . . What was it for? I know
you did it for our sake, but . . ." With a shaking hand he drew out a roll of notes and said: "I
got the money for my lessons today, and can pay your husband what I owe him."
She put the plate back into his hand, and was pounced upon by some one and borne off to a
distance. She caught a glimpse over her partner's shoulder of her father gliding over the
floor, putting his arm round a lady and whirling down the ball-room with her.
"How sweet he is when he is sober!" she thought.
She danced the mazurka with the same huge officer; he moved gravely, as heavily as a dead
carcase in a uniform, twitched his shoulders and his chest, stamped his feet very languidly
-- he felt fearfully disinclined to dance. She fluttered round him, provoking him by her
beauty, her bare neck; her eyes glowed defiantly, her movements were passionate, while he
became more and more indifferent, and held out his hands to her as graciously as a king.
"Bravo, bravo!" said people watching them.
But little by little the huge officer, too, broke out; he grew lively, excited, and, overcome by
her fascination, was carried away and danced lightly, youthfully, while she merely moved
her shoulders and looked slyly at him as though she were now the queen and he were her
slave; and at that moment it seemed to her that the whole room was looking at them, and
that everybody was thrilled and envied them. The huge officer had hardly had time to thank
her for the dance, when the crowd suddenly parted and the men drew themselves up in a
strange way, with their hands at their sides.
His Excellency, with two stars on his dress-coat, was walking up to her. Yes, His
Excellency was walking straight towards her, for he was staring directly at her with a sugary
smile, while he licked his lips as he always did when he saw a pretty woman.