“And when she came out you were not disappointed, were you?” Olga asked, exposing her sparse teeth in a broad, honest smile.
“No,” he laughed.
“Well, neither will you be this time.”
Pavel said to himself humorously: “I am so excited I am afraid I shall fall in love with that girl. But then predictions seldom come true.” Then he added: “And now that I predict it won’t, it will.”
When she came at last he said inwardly: “That’s what she looks like, then! She certainly does not seem to be a fool whatever else she may be.” That was what people usually said upon their first meeting with her: “She seems to be no fool.” She was a fair-complexioned Jewish girl of good height. To those unfamiliar with the many types of her race she might have looked Teutonic. To her own people her face was characteristically Jewish, of the blond, hazel-eyed variety. It was a rather small face, round and with a slightly flattened effect between eyes and mouth that aroused interest. Her good looks were due to a peculiar impression of intelligence and character to which this effect contributed and to the picturesqueness of her colouring—healthy white flesh, clear and firm, set off by an ample crown of fair hair and illuminated by the brown light of intense hazel eyes. She had with her a two-year-old little girl, her sister’s, and accompanying the two was Elkin, from whose manner as he entered the crowded room it was easy to see, first, that he had told Mlle. Yavner of the revolutionary “general” he was going to introduce her to; second, that he was the leader of the Circle and the connecting link between it and revolutionary generals.
“I tried to steal away from her,” she said to Olga, meaning the little girl, “but she ran after us and filled the streets with her cries.” She smiled—an embarrassed smile which made her intelligent face look still more intelligent.
When Boulatoff was introduced to her, by Elkin, she blushed slightly. He watched her with keen curiosity. At the same time the judge’s fiancée was watching him, in the fond hope that he would indorse her opinion of her friend. When Clara averted her face, while speaking to somebody, her features became blurred in Pavel’s mind, and he sought another look at her. Whether Elkin had told her of the effect her “speech” during the Pievakin scene had had on him he had no knowledge.
Some of the men in the gathering made a point of ignoring the little privileges of the sex, treating the girls “as human beings, not as dolls,” but Clara and Olga made a joke of it. When Orlovsky offered the judge’s fiancée a chair next to Clara’s she thanked him much as an “unemancipated” girl would have done; whereupon Mlle. Yavner shook her finger at her, saying merrily:
“You’re getting conservative, Olga. You had better look out.”