Once in the library, a great sombre room to which an open coal fire lent a cheerful touch, Paul's companion seated herself at a low tea-table and busied herself with the samovar.
"This is Russian tea," she said, smiling. "You may not care for it."
"On the contrary," Paul replied, sipping the steaming amber fluid—"I always use this same kind at home. One can't fail to detect the peculiar aromatic flavour which tea retains when it has travelled overland, but which most of the leaves sold in England lose in coming by sea."
"This is my own—which I always carry with me," Mademoiselle Vseslavitch remarked. "We have used no other in our family for many years."
"And where, Mademoiselle, if I may ask, does this highly discriminating family reside? Perhaps, in the course of my wanderings there might come a time when it would be a most important matter for me to obtain a cup of this truly remarkable brew."
Mademoiselle Vseslavitch laughed mischievously at Paul. She had motioned him to a chair where the firelight reached his face, whereas her own was more in shadow. He did not see the amusement in her eyes when she replied:
"Oh! You can find tea like that in many houses east of the Balkans. It is really not wonderful at all."
Paul saw that the lady did not care to tell him much of herself, and he did not venture to press her further just then. But now that the Countess was not there to question, he felt that he must make some effort later.
As they sat there the lady talked to him of things in Paris, of the Luxembourg, the Louvre, Nôtre Dame, the boulevards, and then she wickedly mentioned the Bois de Boulogne. But Paul did not prove very responsive on that subject. The remembrance of the spectacle he had presented the afternoon before did not please him.
He knew right well that she was teasing him, though she did not mention the incident. He almost wished she would—it might give him an opportunity to say to her the words that he longed to say.