In silence they walked to the end of the avenue.
“Why have you sent no reply to that letter from your friend Sonichka?” he inquired. “This is the third letter that you have left unanswered.”
“I would rather forget her altogether,” was Olga’s brief rejoinder.
“Then you are not well?” he continued after a pause.
“Oh yes; nothing is the matter with me. Why should you think otherwise’?”
“Then you are ennuyée?”
She clasped her hands upon his shoulder.
“No,” she said, in a tone of assumed cheerfulness—yet a tone in which the note of ennui was only too plainly apparent.
He led her clear of the shade of the trees, and turned her face to the moonlight.
“Look at me,” he commanded. He gazed intently into her eyes.