"What shall I say?" replies the young lady, without looking up from the package of books, with blameless English accent, but in a decidedly un-English deep, soft voice--"that the French write much nonsense, if it is to raise the price of concert tickets."
"Nita!" said the Englishwoman, angrily; "you surely will not assert that this article is a common advertisement?"
"Certainly I assert it, Miss Wilmot," is the calm answer. "I am firmly convinced that Lensky's impressario has had the article printed."
"Well, I say, Nita, a strange change has taken place in you!" says Miss Wilmot, astonished and discontented, while she at the same time let her wrinkled hands sink down on her cinnamon-colored dress. "But, advertisement or not, Nita, Lensky's results speak for themselves. The Parisians run like mad to his concerts; recently there was such a crowd before the doors of the Salle Erard that the police had to interfere!"
"Bah!" replied she addressed as Nita. "Reliable musicians have told me that Lensky has gone very far back in his art. The animation with which the French do him homage is only a new proof of their immoderate worship of all that is Russian. This tasteless idolatry makes me furious. Then, see here!" And Nita, for the first time in the course of the above conversation, turned her face to the old lady, while at the same time she drew a number of yellow books out from the package which she had been busy glancing over. Piling these up on each other, she said: "Three, five, seven books, translated from the Russian and mere trash, not a sensible line in the whole! What does that matter? The mere circumstance that 'from the Russian' stands upon it assures the worst Galimathias in Paris a publisher and a circle of readers. It is odious."
"Well, Nita, it seems to me that you least of all have the right to wonder over any Russian worship," remarks the old Englishwoman phlegmatically. "You yourself, in my recollection, have accomplished considerable in this respect."
"Who has not some youthful folly to reproach one's self for?" said Nita, shrugging her shoulders. "Fortunately, only in politics is one sentenced to never perceive one's errors. I also once had a violent passion for Russia leather, and I have gotten over that. Nothing in the world is now more unbearable than too much Russia leather, especially in a small room."
"A strange change has taken place in you, Nita," repeated the Englishwoman, who, as if petrified with astonishment, sat there motionless in the position of an Assyrian goddess, still with a hand on each knee. "You not only raved over the Russians, you raved over Boris Lensky; and how you raved!"
A dark blush rose in Nita's pale cheeks; at the same time her eyes darkened. "Good-by, Miss Wilmot," said she, without replying anything to the remarks of the old lady, and turned to the door.
"Will you not take a cup of tea before you go, Nita?" the Englishwoman calls after her.