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All this she did in silence with a sort of droll deliberation and with the same bright sly smile on her slightly parted lips.

She began to wind the wool on a bent card, and all at once she dazzled me with a glance so brilliant and rapid, that I could not help dropping my eyes.

When her eyes, which were generally half closed, opened to their full extent, her face was completely transfigured; it was as though it were flooded with light.

'What did you think of me yesterday, M'sieu Voldemar?' she asked after a brief pause. 'You thought ill of me, I expect?'

'I ... princess ... I thought nothing ... how can I?... ' I answered in confusion.

'Listen,' she rejoined.

'You don't know me yet.

I'm a very strange person; I like always to be told the truth.

You, I have just heard, are sixteen, and I am twenty-one: you see I'm a great deal older than you, and so you ought always to tell me the truth ... and to do what I tell you,' she added.

'Look at me: why don't you look at me?'

I was still more abashed; however, I raised my eyes to her.

She smiled, not her former smile, but a smile of approbation.

'Look at me,' she said, dropping her voice caressingly: 'I don't dislike that ... I like your face; I have a presentiment we shall be friends.

But do you like me?' she added slyly.

'Princess ... ' I was beginning.

'In the first place, you must call me Zinaida Alexandrovna, and in the second place it's a bad habit for children' – (she corrected herself) 'for young people – not to say straight out what they feel. That's all very well for grown-up people. You like me, don't you?'

Though I was greatly delighted that she talked so freely to me, still I was a little hurt.

I wanted to show her that she had not a mere boy to deal with, and assuming as easy and serious an air as I could, I observed, 'Certainly.

I like you very much, Zinaida Alexandrovna; I have no wish to conceal it.'

She shook her head very deliberately. 'Have you a tutor?' she asked suddenly.

'No; I've not had a tutor for a long, long while.'

I told a lie; it was not a month since I had parted with my Frenchman.

'Oh! I see then – you are quite grown-up.'

She tapped me lightly on the fingers. 'Hold your hands straight!' And she applied herself busily to winding the ball.

I seized the opportunity when she was looking down and fell to watching her, at first stealthily, then more and more boldly.

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