United States or Cuba ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was now three years since I had seen Sonetchka, and my love for her had long become a thing of the past, yet there still lingered in my heart a sort of clear, touching recollection of our bygone childish affection.
I understood how silly of me it was to hope to attract the attention of such a wonderful being as Sonetchka. I could not hope for reciprocity could not even think of it, yet my heart was overflowing with happiness.
Stealing softly round the piano which masked the conclave, I beheld the following: Katenka was holding up a pocket-handkerchief by two of its corners, so as to form a screen for the heads of her two companions. "No, you have lost! You must pay the forfeit!" cried Seriosha at that moment, and Sonetchka, who was standing in front of him, blushed like a criminal as she replied, "No, I have NOT lost!
I knew that Sonetchka and her mother had been abroad that, in fact, they had been so for the last two years. Also, I had heard that they had been in a carriage accident, and that Sonetchka's face had been so badly cut with the broken glass that her beauty was marred. As I drove to their house, I kept recalling the old Sonetchka to my mind, and wondering what she would look like when I met her.
Rising, I bowed, and straightway recovered my faculty of speech. On the other hand, an extraordinary change now took place in Sonetchka. All her gaiety and bonhomie disappeared, her smile became quite a different one, and, except for the point of her shortness of stature, she became just the lady from abroad whom I had expected to find in her.
Yet the dance was over before I had succeeded in saying THOU, even though I kept conning over phrases in which the pronoun could be employed and employed more than once. All that I wanted was the courage to say it. "Wilt THOU?" and "THY hand" sounded continually in my ears, and caused in me a kind of intoxication I could hear and see nothing but Sonetchka.
How lovely Sonetchka looked when she was dancing a quadrille as my vis-a-vis, with, as her partner, the loutish Prince Etienne! How charmingly she smiled when, en chaine, she accorded me her hand! How gracefully the curls, around her head nodded to the rhythm, and how naively she executed the jete assemble with her little feet!
When the Iwins arrived I found that, instead of being as delighted as usual to meet Seriosha, I felt a kind of vexation that he should see and be seen by Sonetchka. "HULLO, Woloda! So we are going to dance to-night," said Seriosha, issuing from the drawing-room and taking out of his pocket a brand new pair of gloves. "I suppose it IS necessary to put on gloves?" "Goodness! What shall I do?
Meanwhile, I should say, Sonetchka had returned to the room with her work, and seated herself in a far corner a corner whence, as I was nevertheless sensible, she could observe me.
Woloda, the Iwins, the young Prince Etienne, and myself were all of us in love with Sonetchka and all of us standing on the staircase to follow her with our eyes. To whom in particular she had nodded I do not know, but at the moment I firmly believed it to be myself. In taking leave of the Iwins, I spoke quite unconcernedly, and even coldly, to Seriosha before I finally shook hands with him.
Word Of The Day