“Allow me to ask,”--began Vladímir Sergyéitch, after a brief pause, and in the French language;--“have you known Márya Pávlovna long?”
“Allow me to ask,”--retorted Nadézhda Alexyéevna, with a swift laugh;--“why you have put precisely that question to me in French?”
“Because ... for no particular reason....”
“No; I have not known her very long. But she is a remarkable girl, isn’t she?”
“She is very original,”--said Vladímir Sergyéitch, through his teeth.
“And in your mouth--in the mouth of positive persons--does that constitute praise? I do not think so. Perhaps I seem original to you, also? But,”--she added, rising from her seat and casting a glance through the window,--“the moon must have risen; that is its light on the poplars. It is time to depart.... I will go and give order that Little Beauty shall be saddled.”
“He is already saddled, ma’am,”--said Nadézhda Alexyéevna’s groom, stepping out from the shadow in the garden into a band of light which fell on the terrace.
“Ah! Well, that’s very good, indeed! Másha, where art thou? Come and bid me good-bye.”
Márya Pávlovna made her appearance from the adjoining room. The men rose from the card-table.
“So you are going already?”--inquired Ipátoff.
She approached the door leading into the garden.
“What a night!”--she exclaimed.--“Come here; hold out your face to it; do you feel how it seems to breathe upon you? And what fragrance! all the flowers have waked up now. They have waked up--and we are preparing to go to sleep.... Ah, by the way, Másha,”--she added:--“I have told Vladímir Sergyéitch, you know, that thou art not fond of poetry. And now, farewell ... yonder comes my horse....”
And she ran briskly down the steps of the terrace, swung herself lightly into the saddle, said, “Good-bye until to-morrow!”--and lashing her horse on the neck with her riding-switch, she galloped off in the direction of the dam.... The groom set off at a trot after her.
“Until to-morrow!”--her voice rang out once more from behind the poplars.
The hoof-beats were still audible for a long time in the silence of the summer night. At last, Ipátoff proposed that they should go into the house again.
“It really is very nice out of doors,”--he said;--“but we must finish our game.”