"Thanks, monsieur," she said, lifting the long skirt of her riding-habit over her arm. "Do you stay with us, then?"
"I am not a sportsman, Madame la Princess," he replied, "so that I ask permission to return with you to Pampeln."
"You know well that all our guests are perfectly free to do what best pleases themselves."
And Lise Olsdorf, who was unwilling to approve in any other form the artist's intention, left him, to respond affectionately to the salutation of a young girl barely sixteen years old who was advancing to meet her.
It was Vera, Soublaieff's daughter.
Like most women of Southern Russia, Vera was a decided brunette. From the purity of her features, the perfect oval of her face, and the smallness of her head, she might have been taken to be of Grecian origin. Her large eyes, shaded by long, up-curled lashes, were unspeakably gentle: a virginal smile was constantly playing about her scarlet and slightly parted lips, revealing the pearly teeth. From the national head-gear that she wore two long braids of hair hung, reaching to below the waist, which was defined by her linen dress of various bright colors. Reared at the château until she was fifteen years old, Vera spoke French with a pure accent, had some knowledge of music, and, through her natural elegance of movement of bearing, was a charming child.
Her father, who loved her fondly, could not make up his mind to part with her to the princess, who had several times asked him to do so, wishing that Vera should be a sort of elder sister to her little son.
Paul Meyrin was too much of an artist not to pay homage to Vera's beauty. The princess had kissed her tenderly. Thinking that it could not but please Lise Olsdorf, he said, approaching her:
"What a lovely young girl that is. I supposed that only women of your station in life could be so perfectly beautiful."
"You see that you were mistaken, monsieur," the princess replied, rather ungraciously. "Vera is, in fact, very pretty. She is just as good and as modest, and I love her very much."