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Kuzma Vassilyevitch was bending down to her but she slowly drew herself back and stood stiffly erect like a snake startled in the grass. Kuzma Vassilyevitch stared at her. "Well!" he said at last, "you are a spiteful thing! All right, then."
"I say, you are not jealous, are you?" Colibri raised her eyebrows. "What?" "Jealous ... angry," Kuzma Vassilyevitch explained. "Oh, yes!" "Really! Much obliged.... I say, how old are you?" "Seventen." "Seventeen, you mean?" "Yes." Kuzma Vassilyevitch scrutinised his fantastic companion closely. "What a beautiful creature you are!" he said, emphatically. "Marvellous! Really marvellous! What hair!
Maybe he hasn't ridden away yet." Maxim felt cheerful again, but after waiting for Kuzma for some hours, he could bear it no longer, so he saddled a horse and went off to meet him. He met him just at the Ravine. "Well, have you seen the Cossack?" "I can't find him anywhere, he must have ridden on." "H'm . . . a queer business." Tortchakov took the bundle from Kuzma, and galloped on farther.
"For a boot like that I used not to take less than seven and a half roubles. What shoemaker made it?" he asked. "Kuzma Lebyodkin," answered the footman. "Send for him, the fool!" Kuzma Lebyodkin from Warsaw soon made his appearance. He stopped in a respectful attitude at the door and asked: "What are your orders, your honor?" "Hold your tongue!" cried Fyodor, and stamped his foot.
Kuzma Vassilyevitch got up, approached the door on tiptoe and, fumbling in vain with his fingers, pressed his knee against it. It was no use. Then he bent down and once or twice articulated in a loud whisper, "Colibri! Colibri! Little doll!" No one responded.
"She saw the money," thought Kuzma Vassilyevitch, "she told the old hag and those other two devils, she entrapped me by writing me that letter ... and so they cleaned me out. But who could have expected it of her!" He pictured the pretty, good-natured face of Emilie, her clear eyes.... "Women! women!" he repeated, gnashing his teeth, "brood of crocodiles!"
He tried in his turn to kiss her but she instantly darted back and stood behind the sofa. "To-morrow at seven o'clock, then?" he said with some confusion. She nodded and taking a tress of her long hair with her two fingers, bit it with her sharp teeth. Kuzma Vassilyevitch kissed his hand to her, went out and shut the door after him.
She did not smile, and indeed knitted her brows, her delicate, high, rounded eyebrows, between which a dark blue mark, probably burnt in with gunpowder, stood out sharply, looking like some letter of an oriental alphabet. She almost closed her eyes but their pupils glimmered dimly under the drooping lids, fastened as before on Kuzma Vassilyevitch.
She was disconcerted, turned away, and still sobbing moved a little aside. Kuzma Vassilyevitch repeated his suggestion. The girl looked at him askance through her hair which had fallen over her face and was wet with tears.
"Come here, come here," the "little image" responded in a rather husky voice, with a halting un-Russian intonation and incorrect accent, and she stepped back two paces. Kuzma Vassilyevitch followed her through the doorway and found himself in a tiny room without windows, the walls and floor of which were covered with thick camel's-hair rugs. He was overwhelmed by a strong smell of musk.
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