The man trembled all over with pleasure.
“Mercy on us, Alexander Yevgrafitch.... Yes, I ... O Lord!... is it possible for me not to have seen the greatest, one may say, of Russian artists? Why, in Kazan I made a wig for you with my own hands.”
“The devil may know you. I don’t remember,” said Kostromsky, continuing to make long and narrow lines of white down the length of his nose, “there are so many of you.... Pour out something to drink!”
The barber poured out half a tumblerful of vodka from the decanter on the marble dressing-table, and handed it to Kostromsky.
The actor drank it off, screwed up his face, and spat on the floor.
“You’d better have a little something to eat, Alexander Yevgrafitch,” urged the barber persuasively. “If you take it neat ... it goes to your head....”
Kostromsky had almost finished his make-up; he had only to put on a few streaks of brown colouring, and the “clouds of grief” overshadowed his changed and ennobled countenance.
“Give me my cloak!” said he imperiously to the barber, getting up from his chair.
From the theatre there could already be heard, in the dressing-room, the sounds of the tuning of the instruments in the orchestra.
The crowds of people had all arrived. The living stream could be heard pouring into the theatre and flowing into the boxes stalls and galleries with the noise and the same kind of peculiar rumble as of a far-off sea.