Potage au bisque was also his favorite soup. He stared at Natalie's place, which remained vacant.
A great embarrassment mingled with his pain. He sent the servant, busy at the side-board, out of the room on some pretext.
"Mother is not coming?" he turned to the boy, who had already begun to eat his soup.
"No; mamma has a headache. Poor mamma!"
"Do you wish to be a very clever boy, Kolia?"
"Yes, papa!"
"Then take this bowl of soup to your mother. Do not spill it; perhaps mamma will take a few drops."
With an important face Kolia undertook his errand. Lensky opened the door of the dining-room for him, and looked after him while he tripped along the green-carpeted, dimly-lighted corridor. How pretty and pleasing all that was! The lamps, which stood out from old-fashioned inlaid plates of polished copper, the stags' antlers on the brown wainscoting. And he had not felt happy at home!
Then Kolia came springing back. "I left the soup there," he told his father, who had remained listening and spying in the doorway, "but mamma did not wish to eat it."
"What is mamma doing?"