moment and asked her to open them. Her mother obeyed; Gemma cried
out in ecstasy (Frau Lenore's eyes really were very beautiful), and
rapidly sliding the handkerchief over the lower, less regular part of
the face, fell to kissing her again. Frau Lenore laughed, and turning
a little away, with a pretence of violence, pushed her daughter away.
She too pretended to struggle with her mother, and lavished caresses
on her--not like a cat, in the French manner, but with that special
Italian grace in which is always felt the presence of power.

At last Frau Lenore declared she was tired out ... Then Gemma at once
advised her to have a little nap, where she was, in her chair, 'and
I and the Russian gentleman--"_avec le monsieur russe_"--will be as
quiet, as quiet ... as little mice ... "_comme des petites souris_."'
Frau Lenore smiled at her in reply, closed her eyes, and after a few
sighs began to doze. Gemma quickly dropped down on a bench beside her
and did not stir again, only from time to time she put a finger of
one hand to her lips--with the other hand she was holding up a pillow
behind her mother's head--and said softly, 'sh-sh!' with a sidelong
look at Sanin, if he permitted himself the smallest movement. In the
end he too sank into a kind of dream, and sat motionless as though
spell-bound, while all his faculties were absorbed in admiring the
picture presented him by the half-dark room, here and there spotted
with patches of light crimson, where fresh, luxuriant roses stood in
the old-fashioned green glasses, and the sleeping woman with demurely
folded hands and kind, weary face, framed in the snowy whiteness
of the pillow, and the young, keenly-alert and also kind, clever,
pure, and unspeakably beautiful creature with such black, deep,
overshadowed, yet shining eyes.... What was it? A dream? a fairy
tale? And how came _he_ to be in it?