He hadn’t learned a word, not a syllable of Russian, but he was entirely satisfied. He felt that he had met with something even more truly Russian than the language. He walked out of the building, feeling decidedly more cosmopolitan.
II
Two days later he returned for his next lesson, in the dusk of a snowy February afternoon. This time he found her waiting for him, sitting before the table in the little room. They smiled in friendly fashion.
“I was thinking, as I came,” he said, “that this must be like a Russian winter afternoon.”
“Oh, no!” she said. “It isn’t! It has not the—the feeling. There is—how shall I tell you?—a sort of excitement about our snowy days. But I must not waste your time. Let us begin!”
For ten minutes or so she worked industriously, teaching him Russian words for chair, table, wall, floor, ceiling.
“You are really learning now?” she asked solicitously.
“Yes,” he answered, very much pleased.
“It seems, however, that as a teacher I am not successful,” she said, with a melancholy little smile. “To you I give my first lesson, and to you I give my last. After this I have finished.”
“Why? Is your husband coming back?”