Read "Sanine" by Mikhail Artsybashev online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Volochine owned immense works in St. Petersburg upon which the existence of thousands of his employees depended.
At the present time, while a strike was in progress, he had turned his back upon the crowd of hungry, dirty malcontents, and was enjoying a trip in the provinces. Libertine as he was, he thought of nothing but women, and in young, fresh, provincial women he displayed an intense, in fact, an absorbing interest. He pictured them as delightfully shy and timid, yet sturdy as a woodland mushroom, and their provocative perfume of youth and purity he scented from afar.