“Imagine, my beloved, I thought that I should not be able to take you to the races. I was so rushed at the last moment. Oh! but they will be superb! Never has the track been more perfect; hard as a rock and not a flake of snow.”
“Indeed,” says the lady languidly. Putting out a lazy, be-ringed hand she draws back the curtain that hides her window. “It is superb,” she assents.
“You know how difficult it is to accomplish that,” continues the young officer, “with this cursed wind drifting the Ladoga snow. Still I must tell you that five hundred men have worked all night at it. Brave fellows!
“The journals say something of a three-horse-race.”
“Yes; the event of the day. But come—”
“We have still an hour,” she answers, and motions him to a seat beside her.
“No, no, at your feet, always at your feet, Princess Veta,” says the young man gayly, flinging his head back to better look into the opal-tinted eyes above him. Keeping time with a heavy finger, he sings in a not unmusical baritone, two lines from a French love song:
“Quand tu seras ma femme
M’obeiras—tu mieux?”
But the fair Elisaveta is oblivious to the importance of his melody’s burthen. With her little pointed chin against the rose of her palm she sits lost in a world of reverie.
“Do you remember Sergius Hotzka?” she asks suddenly.