The family hearth must have been something extremely
valuable, as she was going to deliver a slap in the face on its
account--perhaps it was some kind of stove.
It was highly interesting--in the child's imagination--to picture
Nina Kallistratovna entering the flat, swinging back her arm, and
delivering the slap: her gait, her arms, the flat--all had a sudden
hidden and exceedingly curious meaning for the child.
This had remained out of his childhood memories of the little town
and province, where all had seemed unusual as childhood itself.
Now in the Wolf's Ravine Agrenev recalled this incident, and he
brooded bitterly over the certainty that no one would ever deliver a
slap in the face on his account! What vulgarity--slaps in the
face!... and a slap in the face was no solution.
It was now autumn, and as he stood in the ravine waiting for Olya,
the cranes flew low over his head, stretching themselves out like
arrows and crying discordantly. A wintry sulphurous light overspread
the eastern sky, and the blue crest of the Vega shone out above him
tremendous and triumphant, sweeping up into the very heart of the
flaming sunset.
On a sudden, Olya arrived, her figure darkly silhouetted an instant--
a tiny insignificant atom--against the vastness of the hill and sky
as she stood poised on the brink of the ravine; then she clambered
down its precipitous side to Agrenev.
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