“The woman is tall, and seemingly of spare proportions: but only seemingly so. Her bony framework is exceedingly slight and reed-like: so you see, Janka, on close inquiry she is found not to be really thin.”
As she spoke, she turned upon her pillow, tearing at its satin covering with her nails, and striving to swallow down her tears of rage.
I could not contain myself.
“Why on earth does he tell you about such things? He must be a monster.”
“There are a great many things that he never can understand—what I told you seems but the merest trifle to him.”
She took a spoonful of bromide, and continued:
“You must know that he tells me she has large oval-shaped eyes, with extremely long lashes—eyes of an unfathomable black, in very striking contrast with her voluptuous mouth; always sorrowful, dreamy, and with a far-away look, like the beggar-maid loved by King Cophetua. She has also much originality, something like an odalisque, and uniting the primitiveness of a mountain goat with all the cultured grace of a maid of honour at a royal court.”
This, after the elimination of certain exaggerated points, was easily recognizable as the description of that fair Frenchwoman whom I had seen at Lipka’s. And now I understood why Imszanski had shown himself so very full of courtesy toward Czolhanski. The latter, as a theatrical critic, may be useful to him.
“She dresses, it appears, most superbly, with all the magnificence of Babylonian times: golden combs and strings of pearls in her hair; in her ears, rings of the greatest price. Moreover, she is a very miracle of depravity. Witold smiled as he told me so, with an inward look, as though recalling some particular.
“As he told me so, he smiled; and I too smiled, listening with the blandest interest. He looked at me attentively, kissed my hand, and said: