“Also very handsome?”
“Charming. But the men are all in love with the Queen. She is tall and slender; she wears a small gold diadem on her black hair.”
I looked at Zinaída—and at that moment she seemed so far above us, her white forehead and her impassive eyebrows exhaled so much clear intelligence and such sovereignty, that I said to myself: “Thou thyself art that Queen!”
“All throng around her,”—pursued Zinaída;—“all lavish the most flattering speeches on her.”
“And is she fond of flattery?”—asked Lúshin.
“How intolerable! He is continually interrupting.... Who does not like flattery?”
“One more final question,”—remarked Malévsky:—“Has the Queen a husband?”
“I have not thought about that. No, why should she have a husband?”
“Of course,”—assented Malévsky;—“why should she have a husband?”
“Silence!”—exclaimed, in English, Maidánoff, who spoke French badly.