“Ah, that’s the book with the question-marks turned upside down?”—interrupted Zinaída.
“Yes. That is the accepted custom among the Spaniards. I was about to say that Tonkoshéeff....”
“Come now! You will begin to wrangle again about classicism and romanticism,”—Zinaída interrupted him again.—“Let us rather play....”
“At forfeits?”—put in Lúshin.
“No, forfeits is tiresome; but at comparisons.” (This game had been invented by Zinaída herself; some object was named, and each person tried to compare it with something or other, and the one who matched the thing with the best comparison received a prize.) She went to the window. The sun had just set; long, crimson clouds hung high aloft in the sky.
“What are those clouds like?”—inquired Zinaída and, without waiting for our answers, she said:—“I think that they resemble those crimson sails which were on Cleopatra’s golden ship, when she went to meet Antony. You were telling me about that not long ago, do you remember, Maidánoff?”
All of us, like Polonius in “Hamlet,” decided that the clouds reminded us precisely of those sails, and that none of us could find a better comparison.
“And how old was Antony at that time?”—asked Zinaída.
“He was assuredly still a young man,”—remarked Malévsky.
“Yes, he was young,”—assented Maidánoff confidently.