"No, Miss Wilmot; I must hurry a great deal without that in order to reach the studio before twilight. I have promised Sonia to come; so once more adieu; and I beg of you, send all this plunder"--pointing to the books---"back to Calman Levy, and send him word he need no longer disturb me with his Russian stories." With that Nita vanished.
"A strange change, a very strange change," says Miss Wilmot to herself, while she still stares with the same abashed, astonished expression at the door which has just closed behind her young friend. Then she wishes to again take up Figaro in order to translate the article on the devil's violinist into German, for which language she has for twenty years had a love. In vain--the paper is nowhere to be found.
II.
Nita von Sankjéwitch is a young Austrian who lives perfectly independent on her income in Paris. Miss Wilmot, her former governess, now serves as chaperon in her little home.
If Miss Wilmot can be described in brief as an English old maid who reminds one of David's Marie Antoinette on the poor sinner's car, it would, on the contrary, have been quite difficult to give in as few words a half-way significant and life-like description of Nita.
Her figure, tall and slender, with very delicate limbs and long, slender hands and feet, has in carriage and movements something of the harsh, so to say, repellant charm with which the Greeks loved to characterize their Diana statues. Her abundant hair, which is cut straight across her forehead and gathered up in a heavy knot on her neck, is of a light-brown color with reddish lights; her face, long but prettily rounded, is pale, with regular features, finely arched little nose, and full, somewhat arrogantly curved little mouth.
But the most remarkable in her face, the most remarkable in her whole appearance, are the eyes--large, brilliant gray eyes with greenish and bluish lights in them, eyes which suddenly darken, and then become strangely and unfathomably deep, as if she had tasted all the bitterness of creation, and in the next moment look out upon the world again as challengingly bright and cold as if they did not believe there could be a heart-ache that could not be overcome by a gay jest.
In her family Nita was called the "melancholy scamp." Her age was difficult to decide. Just as her nature completely lacked that unrestrained, youthful exuberance, so her face, in spite of the ivory smoothness of the skin, was without all freshness. From her manner she might be forty.
She is the daughter of a born Countess Bärenburg and a Baron Sankjéwitch, who obtained the Theresien cross and the title of Freiherr on the battlefield. Both parents are dead. On her father's side she has no relatives; with her mother's numerous relatives she stands on the best footing, without letting herself be much influenced by them. "It would be very uncomfortable to me to be obliged to be as distinguished as the clan Bärenburg," she used frequently to say, and preferred to say it to the face of the clan Bärenburg. The clan Bärenburg shook its head sadly at that, and regretted her peculiarities, without losing its respect, or even its sympathy, for her. The sharpest judgment which the family had ever pronounced upon her was: "Nita is an original."
Even the sun has spots, the most charming being has her unlovely peculiarities--Nita von Sankjéwitch is an artist! She has her independent studio in the rear of a building in a little court adorned with a pleasure ground, in the Avenue Frochot. Since some months she has shared it with a friend, a young Russian, of whom she is very fond. Nita's studio has two doors: one which leads directly out on the little court, and one which connects Nita's own sanctum with the great painting school of which Monsieur Sylvain is at the head. She has the key of her art nest in her pocket. Before she has yet had time to put it in the key-hole, the door is opened from within. A pretty, blonde young girl comes to meet her, and embraces her as if they had been separated for two years. It is Sonia--i.e., Sophia Dimitrievna Kasin.