Annouchka lowered her eyes, and for the first time I heard a sweet low laugh come from her lips.
"Come, tell me about your trip," she said, arranging the folds of her dress over her knees, as if to install herself there for a long time; "begin or recite something to me, that which you read from Onéguine."[4]
She suddenly became pensive, and murmured in a low voice,—
"Où sont aujourd'hui la croix et l'ombrage
Qui marquaient la tombe de ma pauvre mère."
"That's not exactly the way that Pouchkina[5] expressed himself," I said.
"I should like to be Tatiana,"[6] continued she, still pensive. "Come, speak," she said with vivacity.
But that was far from my thoughts. I looked at her; inundated by the warm light of the sun, she seemed to me so calm, so serene.—About us, at our feet, above our heads, the country, the river, the heavens,—all were radiant; the air seemed to me quite saturated with splendor.
"See, how beautiful it is," I said, lowering my voice involuntarily.
"Oh, yes, very beautiful," she replied in the same tone, without looking at me. "If you and I were birds, how we would dart forth into space—into all that infinite blue! But we are not birds."
"Yes, but we can bring forth wings."