feet more enchantingly than ever over the parquetted floor.
How well I remember how we formed the circle, and how, without
withdrawing her hand from mine, she scratched her little nose with
her glove! All this I can see before me still. Still can I hear the
quadrille from 'The Maids of the Danube' to which we danced that night.
The second quadrille, I danced with Sonetchka herself; yet when we went
to sit down together during the interval, I felt overcome with shyness
and as though I had nothing to say. At last, when my silence had lasted
so long that I began to be afraid that she would think me a stupid boy,
I decided at all hazards to counteract such a notion.
'Vous etes une habitante de Moscou?' I began, and, on receiving an
affirmative answer, continued. 'Et moi, je n'ai encore jamais frequente
la capitale' (with a particular emphasis on the word 'frequente'). Yet I
felt that, brilliant though this introduction might be as evidence of my
profound knowledge of the French language, I could not long keep up the
conversation in that manner. Our turn for dancing had not yet arrived,
and silence again ensued between us. I kept looking anxiously at her in
the hope both of discerning what impression I had produced and of her
coming to my aid.
'Where did you get that ridiculous glove of yours?' she asked me all of
a sudden, and the question afforded me immense satisfaction and relief.
I replied that the glove belonged to Karl Ivanitch, and then went on
to speak ironically of his appearance, and to describe how comical he
looked in his red cap, and how he and his green coat had once fallen
plump off a horse into a pond.
The quadrille was soon over. Yet why had I spoken ironically of poor
Karl Ivanitch? Should I, forsooth, have sunk in Sonetchka's esteem if,
on the contrary, I had spoken of him with the love and respect which I
undoubtedly bore him?
The quadrille ended, Sonetchka said, 'Thank you,' with as lovely an
expression on her face as though I had really conferred, upon her a
favour. I was delighted. In fact I hardly knew myself for joy and could
not think whence I derived such case and confidence and even daring.
'Nothing in the world can abash me now,' I thought as I wandered
carelessly about the salon. 'I am ready for anything.'
Just then Seriosha came and requested me to be his vis-a-vis.
'Very well,' I said. 'I have no partner as yet, but I can soon find
one.'
Glancing round the salon with a confident eye, I saw that every lady was
engaged save one--a tall girl standing near the drawing-room door. Yet a
grown-up young man was approaching her-probably for the same purpose as
myself! He was but two steps from her, while I was at the further end
of the salon. Doing a glissade over the polished floor, I covered the
intervening space, and in a brave, firm voice asked the favour of her
hand in the quadrille. Smiling with a protecting air, the young lady
accorded me her hand, and the tall young man was left without a partner.
I felt so conscious of my strength that I paid no attention to his
irritation, though I learnt later that he had asked somebody who the
awkward, untidy boy was who, had taken away his lady from him.
XXII -- THE MAZURKA
AFTERWARDS the same young man formed one of the first couple in a
mazurka. He sprang to his feet, took his partner's hand, and then,
instead of executing the pas de Basques which Mimi had taught us, glided
forward till he arrived at a corner of the room, stopped, divided his
feet, turned on his heels, and, with a spring, glided back again. I, who
had found no partner for this particular dance and was sitting on the
