"Yes, you!" replied Sanine to his sister, gravely.
"Why, of course I am pretty. You should have said indescribably
pretty!" And, laughing gaily, Lida sank into a chair, glancing again at
Sanine. Raising her arms and thus emphasizing the curves of her shapely
bosom, she proceeded to remove her hat, but, in so doing, let a long
hat-pin fall on the gravel, and her veil and hair became disarranged.
"Andrei Pavlovitch, do please help me!" she plaintively cried to the
taciturn lieutenant.
"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."
Sanine smiled at her.
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."