"I do not see why we should avoid all society if we were there," exclaimed Slawa hotly.
"Well, you could do as you liked about it, of course," said the baroness, who held her daughter in the deepest respect, "I could stay at home; you see, my dear Vladimir," she added almost condescendingly to her son-in-law in spe, "I am uncomfortable in any company where I cannot get into my slippers in the evening...."
"Mamma!" cried her daughter beside herself, "you really are!..."
The baroness sat abashed and silent--no one spoke. There was not a sound in the room but the crackling of the fire in the huge tiled stove and the snoring of the big hunting-dog that lay sleeping on the tail of his mistress's skirt.
"If we only could sell the Bernini!" murmured the baroness presently, resuming the thread of their conversation.
The Bernini was a bust of Apollo that the baroness had inherited from her mother's family--said to be an adaptation by Bernini from the head of the Apollo Belvedere. Whenever the Wolnitzkys were in any financial straits the Bernini was packed off to some dealer in objects of vertu, from which excursions it invariably returned unsold. Not many days previously the travelled Apollo--he had seen New York, London, and St. Petersburg--had come home from a visit to Meyer of Berlin.
"By the bye, Vladimir, you have not seen it yet," said Slawa, "I must show you the bust."
"Is it the head that is said to be so strikingly like you?--that will interest me greatly," said the young Pole, casting an adoring eye on Slawa.
"Bring the lamp, the bust is in the drawing-room."
Vladimir, carrying the lamp, led the way into the drawing-room, a large, scantily-furnished room which was never dusted more than once a month. There, on a marble plinth in a corner, stood the radiant god--a copy from the Belvedere Apollo no doubt--but by Bernini...?