Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/92

 76 without regard to any of those commandments, and she hangs herself on your neck. And there you have love."

"Listen, Serezha, I don't know what others there may have been, and don't want to know about them, but how you managed to persuade me, how you seduced me to our present love; you yourself know; how much was my desire, how much your cunning; but if you betray me for another, Serezha; if you leave me for any other, forgive me, sweetheart, for telling you, I will not part from you alive."

Sergei shuddered.

"But, Katerina Lvovna, you are my bright light," he began. "You can see for yourself how our affair stands. You have just remarked that I am melancholy to-day, and you don't reflect how I can be otherwise. Perhaps my whole heart is drenched with frozen blood."

"Tell me, Serezha, tell me your grief."

"What can I tell you? Here first of all, God help me, your husband will return; then, you, Sergei Filipych, must go away; go along to the back yard, to the musicians, and you can look out of the barn and see how the little candles burn in Katerina Lvovna's bedroom; how she shakes up her feather-bed, and how she is getting ready to sleep with her lawful husband, Zinovey Borisych."