Elena Kirillovna stops her with an angry exclamation:
“Glasha, where are you going? You seem to forget, no matter how often I tell you! Draw the curtains aside.”
Glasha, with some agility, thrusts back the curtains of the two windows and flies out of the room. She is rather low of stature and slender, and one can tell from her face that she is intelligent, but the sound of her rapid footsteps is measured and heavy, giving the impression that the runner is large, powerful, heavy, and capable of doing everything but what requires lightness. The mistress grumbles, looking after her:
“Lord, how she stamps with her feet! She spares neither the floor nor her own heels!”
[2] Means “gentlewoman,” and is a common form of salutation from servant to mistress.
XII
At last the sound of Glasha’s feet dies away in the echoing silence of the long corridor. The old lady lies, waiting, thinking. She is once more straight and motionless under her bed-cover, and very yellow and very still. Her whole life seems to be concentrated in the living sparkle of her keen eyes.
The sun, still low, throws a subdued rosy light on the wall facing her. The bedroom is lit-up and quiet. Swift atoms of dust are dancing about in the air. There is a glitter on the glass of the photographic portraits which hang on the wall, as well as on the narrow gilt rims of their black frames.
Elena Kirillovna looks at the portraits. Her keen, youthfully sparkling eyes carefully scrutinize the beloved faces. Many of these are no longer upon the earth.
Borya’s portrait is a large one, in a broad dark frame. It is a young face, the face of a seventeen-year-old lad, quite smooth and with dark eyes. The upper lip shows a small but vigorous growth of hair. The lips are tightly compressed and the entire face gives the impression of an indomitable will.