I finished up the evening at Princess Ligovski’s; there were no other guests present except Vera and a certain very amusing, little old gentleman. I was in good spirits, and improvised various extraordinary stories. Princess Mary sat opposite me and listened to my nonsense with such deep, strained, and even tender attention that I grew ashamed of myself. What had become of her vivacity, her coquetry, her caprices, her haughty mien, her contemptuous smile, her absentminded glance?...
Vera noticed everything, and her sickly countenance was a picture of profound grief. She was sitting in the shadow by the window, buried in a wide arm-chair... I pitied her.
Then I related the whole dramatic story of our acquaintanceship, our love—concealing it all, of course, under fictitious names.
So vividly did I portray my tenderness, my anxieties, my raptures; in so favourable a light did I exhibit her actions and her character, that involuntarily she had to forgive me for my flirtation with Princess Mary.
She rose, sat down beside us, and brightened up... and it was only at two o’clock in the morning that we remembered that the doctors had ordered her to go to bed at eleven.
CHAPTER X. 13th June.
HALF an hour before the ball, Grushnitski presented himself to me in the full splendour of the uniform of the Line infantry. Attached to his third button was a little bronze chain, on which hung a double lorgnette. Epaulettes of incredible size were bent backwards and upwards in the shape of a cupid’s wings; his boots creaked; in his left hand he held cinnamon-coloured kid gloves and a forage-cap, and with his right he kept every moment twisting his frizzled tuft of hair up into tiny curls. Complacency and at the same time a certain diffidence were depicted upon his face. His festal appearance and proud gait would have made me burst out laughing, if such a proceeding had been in accordance with my intentions.
He threw his cap and gloves on the table and began to pull down the skirts of his coat and to put himself to rights before the looking-glass. An enormous black handkerchief, which was twisted into a very high stiffener for his cravat, and the bristles of which supported his chin, stuck out an inch over his collar. It seemed to him to be rather small, and he drew it up as far as his ears. As a result of that hard work—the collar of his uniform being very tight and uncomfortable—he grew red in the face.
“They say you have been courting my princess terribly these last few days?” he said, rather carelessly and without looking at me.