"Am I dreaming, or did she look at me with those words?" Lensky asked himself. "But why did she turn her eyes away so quickly when they met mine?"
Meanwhile the princess said: "Yes, if all girls wished to wait thus!"
"I am not like all girls," said Natalie, laughing. "Most girls have hearts like hand-organs, which every one can play; others have hearts like Æolian harps, on which no one can play, and still they always vibrate so sympathetically for the world; and still other girls--" she interrupted herself to break a superfluous leaf from a magnolia twig.
The princess, who seemed to lay little weight on Natalie's naïve comparisons, fanned herself indifferently with her peacock fan, but Lensky repeated, "Well, Natalie Alexandrovna, other girls----"
"Other girls have hearts like Amati violins; if a bungler touches them there is a horrible discord; but if a true artist comes who understands it, then----"
This exaggerated remark she had made in a voice trembling between mockery and tenderness, and incessantly occupied with the arrangement of her flowers.
Without ending the last sentence, she broke off, and bent her head to the right to observe a combination of white roses and heliotrope with a thoughtful look.
The princess yawned from heat and discontent. "Leave me in peace from your musical comparisons, Natascha," said she. "Besides, I can assure you that no one spoils a fine instrument quicker than one of your great virtuosos. When I think how Franz Liszt ruined our Pleyel in a single evening; it was no longer fit even for a conservatory."
"Violins are not ruined as quickly as pianos," said Natalie, laughing; then, still speaking to the flowers, she said: "Don't you think, little mother, that if such a piano had a soul, a mind, it would rather rejoice to really live for once under the hands of a great master, and even if it were to die of the joy, than merely to exist for a half-century in a noble, charming room, as a carefully preserved showpiece?"
Again it seemed to Lensky that she looked at him, and again she turned away her head when their looks met. "You are astonished at this great expenditure for flowers?" she remarked. "We expect guests this evening--my cousins from St. Petersburg, the Jeliagins. You know them, and I shall try to draw their critical looks away from the holes in the furniture covering to these beautiful color effects. So! Now I have finished; here are a few May-bells left for your button-hole. Ah! really, you never wear flowers!"