"Have the kindness to introduce me, Sonitschka," asks he. His voice trembles a little.
"My cousin, Nikolai Lensky," says Sophie, in a tone which betrays that this cousin is not merely a cousin for her.
"Fräulein von Sankjéwitch," she adds, explanatorily. "But what is the matter, my heart, you look so faint?" This turning to Nita.
"It is nothing; it will pass off," murmurs Nita, and sits down.
Nikolai's features take on a truly anxious expression, and he cannot take his eyes from off her. Why does she, just she, please him, before she has exchanged a word with him, better than formerly any woman has pleased him? She looks unusually attractive to-day, besides. The weary fever which quite weighs her down to the ground takes from her appearance the harshness which often makes her somewhat cold. The outline of her face is much softer than formerly. A mysterious light shines from her large eyes, the eyes in which a strange grief lies buried, and round her mouth trembles an expression as of death-sentenced tenderness which will not die.
"Could you possibly get me a vinaigrette, Colia?" asks Sonia, anxiously.
A mad storm of applause cuts short her words. Through the passage left between the audience on the stage strides a large man, with long, half-curled hair, which begins to grow gray; with a face whose features remind one of an Egyptian Sphinx, a face with an indescribable expression of gloomy sadness, austere pride, and touching kindness; a face that is not handsome, but which one never forgets when one has once seen it, the face of a man who has tasted all the pleasures of earth and who is yet always hungry--the face of a man who still desperately longs for something in which he has long ceased to believe.
The two coöperators are behind him--the 'cellist, a Parisian celebrity with curly hair parted in the middle, and a very long mustache, which he had inherited from an exiled Polish martyr; the pianist, a pupil of De Sterny, like him in appearance, blond, slender, medium sized, faultlessly attired, almost dandified.
Lensky bows simply, benevolently, in all directions; the Schumann trio commences.
Dominating the two other instruments, the silvery sweet tones of the violin vibrate through the hall.