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Novikoff felt that Sanine knew all that was troubling him, and, though in a measure comforted, he Was yet childishly abashed. "Come along!" said Sanine gently, as taking hold of Novikoff's shoulders he pushed him towards the door. "Yes ... I ..." murmured the latter. A sudden impulse to embrace Sanine almost overcame him, but he dared not and could but glance at him with tearful eyes.
I will say that I do not see how the latter could have helped me, for the purchaser was the representative of a Petersburg house who happened to be in Vienna for the purpose of attending the sale of the Princess Novikoff's jewels you probably saw all about it in the papers." It was a remarkable sale, and the extraordinary prices realized are probably fresh in most people's memories.
He was not above broad farce when the fancy seized him. At the time when a certain kind of nonsense verse was popular, he, with Sir Noel Paton and others, added not a few facetious sonnets to Edward Lear's book, which lay on Madame Novikoff's table.
Shall we go to her?" Novikoff's heart beat faster. Within it, joy and grief seemed strangely blended. His expression changed Somewhat, and he nervously fingered his moustache. "Well, what do you say? Shall we go?" repeated Sanine calmly, as if he had decided to do something important.
In a few days appeared his famous pamphlet, "Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East." Carlyle advised that Madame Novikoff's scattered papers should be worked into a volume; they appeared under the title "Is Russia Wrong?" with a preface by Froude, the moderate and ultra-prudent tone of which infuriated Hayward and Kinglake, as not being sufficiently appreciative.
Lida burst out laughing. "What a lumpish compliment!" she exclaimed. "I don't know how to pay compliments," was Novikoff's sullen rejoinder. "Very well, then, sit still and listen," said Lida, shrugging her shoulders, pettishly. But you no longer care, I know, Why should I grieve you with my woe? The tones of the piano rang out with silvery clearness through the green, humid garden.
The appearance in Madame Novikoff's rooms of a certain Scotch bishop invariably drove him out of them, "Peter Paul, Bishop of Claridge's," he called him. His allusions to Mirliton and to the Bishop frequently mystified Madame Novikoff's guests. For he loved to talk in cypher.
Equally dear, in fact, unspeakably precious to him, were all the little things that he had never noticed, as well as those which he had always found full of beauty and importance; the heaven, dark and vast, with its golden stars, the driver's gaunt back, in its shabby smock; Novikoff's troubled countenance; the dusty road; houses with their lighted windows; the dark trees that silently stayed behind; the jolting wheels; the soft evening breeze all that he could see, and hear, and feel.
Kinglake's external life, his literary and political career, his speeches, and the more fugitive productions of his pen, were recoverable from public sources; but his personal and private side, as it showed itself to the few close intimates who still survive, must have remained to myself and others meagre, superficial, disappointing, without Madame Novikoff's unreserved and sympathetic confidence.
But she took no heed of him nor of his glances, so enthralled was she by the might and magic of a first passion. She shut her eyes, and smiled at her thoughts. In Novikoff's soul there was the old strife; he loved Lida, yet he could not be sure of her feelings towards himself. At times she loved him, so he thought; and again, there were times when she did not.
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