But these bursts of emotion were rare.
Generally the youth regarded Medinskaya with adoration, admiring everything in her--her beauty, her words, her dresses.

And beside this adoration there was in him a painfully keen consciousness of his remoteness from her, of her supremacy over him.
These relations were established between them within a short time; after two or three meetings Medinskaya was in full possession of the youth and she slowly began to torture him.

Evidently she liked to have a healthy, strong youth at her mercy; she liked to rouse and tame the animal in him merely with her voice and glance, and confident of the power of her superiority, she found pleasure in thus playing with him.

On leaving her, he was usually half-sick from excitement, bearing her a grudge, angry with himself, filled with many painful and intoxicating sensations.

And about two days later he would come to undergo the same torture again.
One day he asked her timidly: "Sophya Pavlovna! Have you ever had any children ?" "No." "I thought not!" exclaimed Foma with delight.
She cast at him the look of a very naive little girl, and said: "What made you think so?
And why do you want to know whether I had any children or not ?" Foma blushed, and, bending his head, began to speak to her in a heavy voice, as though he was lifting every word from the ground and as though each word weighed a few puds.
"You see--a woman who--has given birth to children--such a woman has altogether different eyes." "So?
What kind are they then ?" "Shameless!" Foma blurted out.
Medinskaya broke into her silver laughter, and Foma, looking at her, also began to laugh.
"Excuse me!" said he, at length.