Natalie sat down. Both hands resting on the red surface of the mahogany table, she bent over the flowers, and slowly with a kind of tenderness inhaled the dreamy, melancholy perfume.
"Have you had a pleasant winter?" began Sergei Alexandrovitch.
"I do not know," replied she without looking at him; "I have forgotten, but the spring was wonderfully beautiful, wonderfully beautiful," and she bent over the flowers again.
"Hm! So you prefer Rome to Naples?" said he condescendingly.
"Yes."
"You seem to have been very comfortably fixed here," he remarked, with a glance around. "You have very pretty rooms. Those are beautiful roses which you have there."
"Boris Lensky sent them to me," said she, while she at the same time pulled a rose from the basket to fasten it in the bodice of her light foulard dress. Then she sat down opposite Sergei. War was declared.
"Lensky seems to be a great deal with you," said Assanow, condescendingly.
"Yes."
"I heard of it through acquaintances in Petersburg," began the prince. "It did not quite please me."