Poor soul! she was enjoying the recherché supper thoroughly, and, after the first glass of Perrier Jouët, began telling him anecdotes of her checkered career; a quarter of an hour later she sidled up to him, looking somewhat amused the while.
“You funny booby,” she laughed, “you may, you know,” and she stretched out a very red cheek towards him.
“Look out! the waiter is coming,” said Iván, pushing back his chair and hastily jumping up from the table.
The bare idea of having to kiss that ugly, elderly woman sent a cold shiver down his spine.
“What if he is, booby mine?” she replied, giving way to an uncontrollable fit of laughter—the idea seemed so amusing. “Do you think he has never seen me kissed before? Come, cheer up, sit down again; your mammy shan’t know. There now, this is much more comfortable,” she added, for Volenski, on whom the importance of the present situation flashed again in an instant, had offered his feelings as holocaust on the altar of the great cause, and resumed his seat beside the donna—with an arm round her antiquated waist. She placed her yellow head languishingly on his shoulder.
“Do you know, little booby, that, as a rule, I don’t much care for young gentlemen like yourself?”
“No?” he asked indifferently.
“Well, you see,” she said with a pout, “it is difficult to get any fun out of them, they are so mortally afraid of being seen in our company that they won’t take us anywhere.”
Iván could not help smiling to himself at the idea of taking this beauty—say to the opera—and meeting his Eminence on the way, and did not wonder that Grete was not very often taken to the theatre by “young gentlemen” like himself.
“Who are the people you like best then, Grete?” he asked, in order to keep up the conversation.