Still busy with her hair, she turned partly toward him:
“Apropos of nothing,” she said, “a man was exceedingly impudent to me on the street this evening. A Russian, too. I was so annoyed!”
“What do you mean?”
“It happened just as I started to ascend the steps.... There was a man there, loitering. I supposed he meant to beg. So I felt for my purse, but he jumped back and began to curse me roundly for an aristocrat and a social parasite!”
“What did he say?”
“I was so amazed––quite stupefied. And all the while he was swearing at me in Russian and in English, and he warned me to keep away from Marya and Vanya and Ilse and mind my own damned business. And he said, also, that if I didn’t there were people in New York who knew how to deal with any friend of the Russian aristocracy.”
She patted a curly strand of hair into place, and came toward him in her leisurely, lissome way.
“Fancy the impertinence of that wretched Red! And I understand that both Vanya and Marya have received horribly insulting letters. And Ilse, also. Isn’t it most annoying?”
She seated herself at the piano and absently began the Adagio of the famous sonata.