“Yes, she’s a beauty!” murmured Sanine, thinking aloud, and never taking his eyes off her. Once more Lida glanced shyly at her brother.
“We’re all of us beautiful here,” said she.
“What’s that? Beautiful? Ha! Ha!” laughed Sarudine, showing his white, shining teeth. “We are at best but the modest frame that serves to heighten the dazzling splendour of your beauty.”
“I say, what eloquence, to be sure!” exclaimed Sanine, in surprise. There was a slight shade of irony in his tone.
“Lidia Petrovna would make anybody eloquent,” said Tanaroff the silent, as he tried to help Lida to take off her hat, and in so doing ruffled her hair. She pretended to be vexed, laughing all the while.
“What?” drawled Sanine. “Are you eloquent too?”
“Oh! let them be!” whispered Novikoff, hypocritically, though secretly pleased.
Lida frowned at Sanine, to whom her dark eyes plainly said:
“Don’t imagine that I cannot see what these people are. I intend to please myself. I am not a fool any more than you are, and I know what I am about.”
At last the hat was removed, which Tanaroff solemnly placed on the table.
“Look! Look what you’ve done to me, Andrei Pavlovitch!” cried Lida half peevishly, half coquettishly. “You’ve got my hair into such a tangle! Now I shall have to go indoors.”
“I’m so awfully sorry!” stammered Tanaroff, in confusion.
Lida rose, gathered up her skirts, and ran indoors laughing, followed by the glances of all the men. When she had gone they seemed to breathe more freely, without that nervous sense of restraint which men usually experience in the presence of a pretty young woman. Sarudine lighted a cigarette which he smoked with evident gusto. One felt, when he spoke, that he habitually took the lead in a conversation, and that what he thought was something quite different from what he said.
“I have just been persuading Lidia Petrovna to study singing seriously. With such a voice, her career is assured.”
“A fine career, upon my word!” sullenly rejoined Novikoff, looking aside.
“What is wrong with it?” asked Sarudine, in genuine amazement, removing the cigarette from his lips.
“Why, what’s an actress? Nothing else but a harlot!” replied Novikoff, with sudden heat. Jealousy tortured him; the thought that the young woman whose body he loved could appear before other men in an alluring dress that would exhibit her charms in order to provoke their passions.