It is very gay at the Hermitage, in Moscow, just after Easter, and so it was natural that Sonia Turgeinov should have been there on a certain bright afternoon some three years later. The theater, at which she once more appeared, was closed for the afternoon, and at this season following Holy Week and fasting, fashionables and others were wont to congregate in the spacious café and grounds, where a superb orchestra discourses classical or dashing selections. The musicians played now an American air.
"Some one at a table out there on the balcony sent a request by the head waiter for it," said a member of Sonia Turgeinov's party—a Parisian artist, not long in Moscow.
"An American, no doubt," she answered absently, sipping her wine. The three years had treated her kindly; the few outward changes could be superficially enumerated: A little more embonpoint; a tendency toward a slight drooping at the corners of the mobile lips, and moments when the shadows seemed to stay rather longer in the deep eyes.
"That style of music should appeal to you, Madam," observed the Frenchman. "You who have been among those favored artists to visit the land of the free. Did you have to play in a tent, and were you literally showered with gold?"
"Both," she laughed. "It is a land of many surprises."
"I have heard es ist alles 'the almighty dollar'," said a musician from Berlin, one of the gay company.
"Exaggeration, mein Herr!" she retorted, with a wave of the hand. "It is also a komischer romantischer land." For a moment she seemed thinking.
"Isn't that his excellency, Prince Boris Strogareff?" inquired abruptly a young man with a beyond-the-Volga physiognomy.
She started. "The prince?" An odd look came into her eyes. "Do you believe in telepathic waves, Monsieur?" she said gaily to the Frenchman.
"Not to any great extent, Madam. Mais pourquoi?"