She looked at him with her enigmatic eyes and answered quietly, even a trifle shyly, it seemed:
“Formerly, people lived more gaily and did not know prejudices of any sort. Well, it seems to me that then I would have been in my place and would have lived with a full life. O, ancient Rome!”
No one understood her, save Ryazanov, who, without looking at her, slowly pronounced in his velvety voice, like that of an actor, the classical, universally familiar, Latin phrase:
“Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant!”
“Precisely! I love you very much, Ryazanov, because you are a clever child. You will always catch a thought in its flight; although, I must say, that this isn’t an especially high property of the mind. And really, two beings come together, the friends of yesterday, who had conversed with each other and eaten at the same table, and this day one of them must perish. You understand depart from life forever. But they have neither malice nor fear. There is the most real, magnificent spectacle, which I can only picture to myself!”
“How much cruelty there is in you,” said the baroness meditatively.
“Well, nothing can be done about it now! My ancestors were cavaliers and robbers. However, shan’t we go away now?”
They all went out of the garden. Volodya Chaplinsky ordered his automobile called. Ellena Victorovna was leaning upon his arm. And suddenly she asked:
“Tell me, Volodya, where do you usually go when you take leave of so-called decent women?”
Volodya hemmed and hawed. However, he knew positively that he could not lie to Rovinskaya.