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Tamara asked for paper and pencil, and wrote a few words right on the spot. Then she gave the note to the waiter, together with a half-rouble piece for a tip, and rode away. The following visit was to the artiste Rovinskaya, living, as Tamara had known even before, in the city's most aristocratic hotel Europe where she occupied several rooms in a consecutive suite.
Rovinskaya went up to the piano, took a few chords, and suddenly began to sing the splendid ballad of Dargomyzhsky: "We parted then with pride Neither with sighs nor words Proffered I thee reproach of jealousy ... We went apart for aye, Yet only if with thee I might but chance to meet! .. Ah, that with thee I might but chance to meet!
True, on Yamskaya Street there happen various scandals and fights and misunderstandings. But that's there ... in these ... in the rouble establishments. The Russian girls drink a lot and always have one lover. And they do not think at all of their future." "You are prudent, Elsa," said Rovinskaya in an oppressed tone. "All this is well. But, what of the chance disease? Infection?
"An amazing occupation," said Rovinskaya. "Well now, Chaplinsky, you try to toss your head about like that." Volodya Chaplinsky, secretly and hopelessly in love with the artiste, immediately began obediently and zealously to do this, but after half a minute desisted. "It's impossible," he said, "either long training, or, perhaps, hereditary abilities, are necessary for this."
Why, that is death? And how can you guess?" "And again no, madam. I won't let a man into my bed before I make a detailed medical inspection of him ... I am guaranteed, at the least, against seventy-five per cent." "The devil!" suddenly exclaimed Rovinskaya with heat and hit the table with her fist. "But, then, what of your Albert ..." "Hans," the German corrected her meekly.
The remaining two agreed to this, unwillingly, in all probability; but there was no possibility of opposing Ellena Victorovna. She always did everything that she wanted to. And then they had all heard and knew that in Petersburg carousing worldly ladies, and even girls, permit themselves, out of a modish snobbism, pranks far worse than the one which Rovinskaya had proposed.
And the lips were then cold and dry, while the damp mist of the morning lay upon the hair. Silence seized Tamara; silence seized Manka the Scandaliste; and suddenly Jennka, the most untamable of all the girls, ran up to the artiste, fell down on her knees, and began to sob at her feet. And Rovinskaya, touched herself, put her arms around her head and said: "My sister, let me kiss you!"
All of them stout, full-breasted, blonde, powdered, very important and respectful. The conversation did not catch on at first. The girls sat immovable, like carvings of stone, in order to pretend with all their might that they were respectable ladies. Even the champagne, which Ryazanov called for, did not improve the mood. Rovinskaya was the first to come to the aid of the party.
Who knows, perhaps for all those sitting here, below, the present evening is a rest, a holiday?" "The speech for the defense," put in Chaplinsky in his calm manner. But Rovinskaya quickly turned around to the men, and her long emerald eyes narrowed. And this with her served as a sign of wrath, from which even crowned personages committed follies at times.
Rovinskaya, like many of her confreres, did not let one day pass by and, if it were possible, she would not have let pass even one hour without standing out from the crowd, without compelling people to talk about her: to-day she would participate in a pseudo-patriotic manifestation, while to-morrow she would read from a platform, for the benefit of revolutionaries exiled to Siberia, inciting verses, full of fire and vengeance.
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