"Ah, how generous!" said Mascha. "How glad I am to have learned to know him, and you cannot think how nice he was to me. He spoke so pleasantly of you, Colia. Then he got a paper to see whether there was anything about you in it, papa. We found a notice which relieved me as to your health, and then after the worry I had had, my heart was so light that I cried. Arrived in Paris, he sent his servant with me because he did not want me to drive all the way through the city alone, and here I am. You see, madame"--she turns coaxingly to Grévin--"on the whole it was certainly better than if I had travelled in a ladies' compartment."
But Madame Grévin only shrugged her shoulders, and said: "That is a matter of taste; for my daughter, I should have preferred the ladies' compartment."
Lensky is silent; he notices vexedly what a false effect the story of his petted daughter has made on those present.
Most of the men smile; they seek behind Mascha's naïveté calculating frivolity seeking for adventures.
Meanwhile, without embarrassment, she drinks a few sips of champagne from her father's glass, and continues: "The stupidest was that they did not want to let me in here to you in the hotel. They said, 'Monsieur Lensky is dining now.' And yet I told them that I was your daughter. They said very coarsely: 'Anyone could say that.' For what did they take me, then--for one of those fools who run after you?"
"Mascha!" Lensky says, reprovingly.
"And, besides, I look so strikingly like you," she continues.
"So, do you really look like me?" asks Lensky, who cannot look stern before this sweet childish tenderness. "Really like me?" Then, taking her by the chin and looking attentively at her face: "Well, yes; the dear God is a great artist. Strange what wonderfully beautiful variations he can write on an ugly theme!"
"Mamma always said it was quite laughable how much I resembled you," whispers Mascha; and adds softly: "She always said that to me when she was especially good to me."
Those present have ceased to interest themselves in the child; only Madame d'Olbreuse looks at her kindly across the virtuoso. The journalist industriously supplies Mademoiselle Klein with champagne; the other men talk together, murmur bad jokes in each other's ears, half aloud, with the evident intention to be heard. The champagne goes more and more to Mademoiselle Klein's head. After an animated tirade upon Lensky, she says, laughingly: "I have been in Paradise often enough to hear Lensky, but if it were necessary, I would go into hell for him."