AND AS SOON as Baron Kuzma Mishin awakes from sleep in the rude hut at Vanavara, he feels the warmth of the countess's naked body next to his and rejoices that he has enjoyed such ecstasy as on the previous night.  He cannot help but enjoy this same ecstasy one more time before they get ready to be ferried over to the Stony Tunguska River into a savage landscape, where they'll have to sleep fully outfitted in fur coats and boots.

He pulls the bedding down a little way to contemplate the faint, blurred outline of Lydia's face and shoulders in the gray of dawn--in their haste they had left the window only partially curtained.

The snow on the ledge and the leaves of frost on the panes focus, as in a lens, the faint light coldly upon the bed; the rest of the room is as dark as the interior of a cupboard.  

The previous night, Lydia made love to Kuzma in a way that he thinks of as sincere. There was no inane chatter, no babble of meaningless vows, no poetry.  Instead, in each other's arms they had both released a tension that had been pent up in their souls and bodies for many weeks---the product of a void in both their lives, which he for his part had filled up with bearish growls, and she for hers with bizarre behavior.

As in the case with essentially frigid people, who need to rub their bodies together in abandon as the only way of setting them on fire, their lovemaking was sensuous and lustful.  They had snatched at their joys almost desperately, he and she.

To wake her up, Kuzma kisses her shoulders.

He whispers, "Darling Lydia," yet there is little love or passion in his voice, for they both owe a desperate, selfish duty to themselves....

Her lips move beneath his lips. "Phyl," she murmurs. There's a harshness in the way she says his name, for it resembles the stubborn grating of a pair of adjacent boulders in a river that is rushing ever onward past them in a flood towards some mysterious and distant destiny.  And thus she opens her embrace to him.

She's still half asleep, and she stays that way, as if what takes place now is but the continuation of a haunted dream---and this relieves her of any sense of connection with the rest of the day.

Later, she sits up.  Candlelight views with the ice-light.  Having pulled on her lace-decorated chemise, she brushes out her chestnut hair.  Mishin lights a Spanish cigar that he borrowed from Eric; he exhausted his own supply hours ago.

"What encounters there are in our lives!" he exclaims.  But then he paces around the room monotonously like a caged tiger, wearied suddenly by the length of time it takes her to get ready.  "Just imagine this, every morning!' he thinks to himself, feeling an odd blend of lust and boredom.

"I wonder how Evpra and Zino are getting along?" Lydia asked coldly.  "Evpra's the sliest one, you know!  She stares at a closed door as if she can see right through the wood---as if a sixth sense tells her everything.  It's quite disconcerting!  But she's not old enough to understand ay of it."

So if I became your husband, thinks Mishin, then Evpra would watch my door all the time to make sure I wasn't slipping out to your boudoir or even smoking in bed!  Why should a child exercise such damnable tyranny---unless that's how you want it to be?  Unless it's your excuse.

"You're glad to be free of a dull fool of a husband so now you frustrate yourself to preserve your freedom!  Oh, you cut a fine figure, Lydia, you truly do, with your American camera and your cigarettes and your dashing ways. And really, all the time, you're a slave to freedom!  That's it."

At first Kuzma is delighted by his perspicacity; but then the suspicion dawns on him that Lydia and the wayward governess Phyllis Faerber are in reality secret lovers.  Thinking back, it seems to him that when he kissed Lydia awake, it was not his own diminutive, Kuz, which she murmured so demandingly in reply----but rather "Phyl," diminutive of Phyllis, the name of her dream.

Such a thing is not completely beyond his understanding.  It's not even beyond his sympathy, swear as height at such atrocities in the Mess; prescribe, as he might, a swift phallic cure for them.

Had Lydia and Phyllis sworn blood brotherhood (or sisterhood), nicking their wrists with sharp knives, blending their bloodstreams? What impulsive, impetuous creatures they both had seemed to him---surely they both nursed strong desires!

He wonders now what's gotten into him.  Such slander against a woman he's just now slept with!

He puzzles on and on, convinced that he's never thought as deeply as this morning.  It's as if Lydia has lit a taper of speculation deep in him, which is flickering its light into dark corners.

On impulse he catches and raises her wrist, to stare at the white skin closely, seeking for the faint crack of a long-healed scar.

"What on Earth?!"

"You ought to wear a fine golden wristwatch, Lydia.  I'll buy you one someday."

"Who needs to know what time it is?  It's always either too late or too early."

Kuzma guffaws. "It wasn't for us."

"You embarrass me, Baron.  Have you lost respect for me so soon?"

"Not one fine ounce of it!  I'm insane for you---that's the trouble.  Ah, love!  I think love's a pretty dodgy proposition. A fellow can fall in love with a sheep, if he's lonely enough."

"But a sheep cannot fall in love with him."

"Or a woman could fall in love with a governess."

"Really?" Lydia purses her lips. "I wouldn't know."

"God fell in love with the world, Lydia.  And He composed flowers and rivers and birds and trees and clouds to encourage us. But in our responses we're just like sheep.  Munch, munch---not half bad, this patch of grass!  Munch, munch---this clover's a bit of all right!  That's what everyone's really like inside.  Yet Cupid's blind, and love's an enchantment that stops us from seeing the truth.  But the enchantment wears off after a while:  two years, or three at the most. So where's the use?  Before you even get going, you're condemned!"

"Lust," she answers, "is sometimes far more honest."

"That's a true word you've spoken. It's because of confusing lust with love that we all get into trouble.  Only God knows love."

"Because He doesn't know lust."

"I think love is something you feel for people in anguish.  It's a form of sympathy that has nothing whatsoever to do with beauty." And suddenly Kuzma kneels by Lydia's side, and to his surprise he bursts into tears.  "Forgive me, lady!  Forgive me for not feeling love for you because you're so beautiful!  I'll tell you again what anguish is. Anguish is an "impossible love," not one you can fulfil---if you get my drift?"

"I believe you're reading my heart, mon cheri.  If I'd known you could read hearts, I don't think i should have made love to you!  Imagine an awful world where everyone can read everyone else's heart at a glance---how horrible!" She speaks lightly, though really this is the levity of deep pain.  "Voyez;  no hidden secrets, no enchantments, no impossibilities----Consequently, no love---ever again.  Bien, le fin d'amour."

However, by now her hair is fully brushed. And someone walks past the frosted window, down the snowy Vanavara street, banging two pieces of metal together noisily; alarmed, a packhorse whinnies.