"I would rather be alone," said the girl. "Will you please wait in the next room, Maria Badisikaya?"
"But I can help you so, my little darling," said the woman, fussing about. "A bride has no luck for thirty years if she puts on her own stockings."
"Go!" said the girl imperiously, and the woman cringed.
"Certainly, Excellenz," she stammered, and went out without another word.
The girl changed quickly, and surveyed herself in the pier glass at the end of the room. It was striking but horrible. There came a tap at the door and the agitated Maria entered.
"He has sent for you, my little dove," she said. "Come, take my arm. Do not tremble, my little pretty. Boolba is a good man and the greatest man in Moscow."
She would have taken the girl's arm, but Irene waved her aside, and walked swiftly from the drawing-room into the grand saloon. She wanted the ordeal over as soon as possible.
The room was crowded, and though many of the electric lamps in the great glass chandelier were not in working order and a broken fuse had put half the wall brackets in darkness, the light was almost dazzling. This wonderful saloon, where ten Czars had eaten bread and salt with ten generations of Yaroslavs, was thick with humanity. Some of the men were in uniform, some were in a nondescript costume which was the Soviet compromise between evening-dress and diplomatic uniform. One man wore a correct evening-jacket and a white waistcoat with a perfectly starched shirt, over uniform trousers and top-boots. The women were as weirdly clothed. Some were shabby to the point of rags, a few wore court dresses of the approved pattern, and there was one woman dressed like a man, who smoked all the time. The air was blue with tobacco smoke and buzzing with sound.
As she came into the saloon somebody shouted her name, and there was vigorous applause, not for her, she knew, nor for the name she bore, but for the novelty and the "beauty" of her wedding gown.