The farther she penetrated into the heart of Russia the less she comprehended or liked her new country. Indeed, slowly but surely a sort of abhorrence for everything pertaining to it was rising within her; and her hard face and unsympathetic expression made one young officer on leave murmur to another young officer on leave, who sat beside him at table that night: “I say, Voïnóff, Palitzin’s efforts to marry a foreigner are all in vain. He’s caught a Tartar, after all!”
The other, whose uniform glittered like sunshine, and whose name was the vernacular for “Warrior,” was blessed with one of those meek faces that are greatly confirmed in that expression by sleek, butter-hued hair rigidly parted all the way down the middle, as was his. Also he had a habit of blushing all over his scalp, which made him resemble for minutes at a time what the Italians frivolously call un piccolo porcellino. He indulged in one of these manifestations at his comrade’s words, adding thereto a smothered squeal of delight, which completed the likeness very neatly.
“I catch you laughing at me, Yégor-Alexandréitch!” Countess Chouróff called out to him. “You think my little stories are not befitting this noble assemblage!”
“It ... it is Zakbarièf!” choked the youth, getting pinker and pinker under his pale, silky thatch. “He is so funny!”
Zakbarièf tried to protest, but vainly, for Madame Chouróff had already launched herself into another anecdote, and he relapsed into silence, bestowing dagger-like looks upon his grinning brother-at-arms.
Dessert was approaching, heralded by turreted confections, reminding one involuntarily of the glorious ice palace that every winter is built on the Neva; by pyramids of sweet cakes and transparent edifices of jelly which it took two men to carry. According to Russian fashion, the fruit and bonbons and minor toothsomenesses had had their place on the cloth from the beginning of dinner, cincturing with their appetizing battalions the masses of flowers and feathery foliage forming the center and wings of that opulent display. Lucullus dining with Lucullus could have devised nothing more truly complete.
“You are bored, madame? You think our agapes too ostentatious?” The question was asked by Laurence’s left-hand neighbor, whom it must be admitted she, in her fault-finding and sulky mood, had absolutely neglected, as she had also her right-hand one, who, by the way, was a corpulent Chouróff, more interested in his plate than in pretty women. To be sure, when the general presentations had been gone through she had not heard either name, and, as if perversely inclined, the little dinner-cards inscribed with them had lain prone on their faces between her cover and theirs. Yet the speaker was not a man to be easily overlooked. Tall, slender, without being in the least thin, he had the most interesting face imaginable: a delicately aquiline face, barred by a long, slender mustache inclining to a light frost of grayness, which was repeated in his thick, short-cut hair. Deep under well-marked brows were what could well have been called, after the fashion of lady-novelists, “eagle’s eyes,” so penetrating were they, and he wore his dress-coat like a hauberk—a soldier every inch of him, if out of uniform—a Grand Seigneur of olden times in modern mufti.
“Not precisely bored,” drawled Laurence, turning languidly toward him. “But a little surprised at what I see. Surely, monsieur, you are not a Russian?”
“I am not, madame, and sometimes I regret it, for they are a great people over here.”
“Think so?”