suspected your existence. And the old lady, Madame Fritsche, is your
aunt, too?'
'Yes ... aunt.'
'Hm! You don't seem to understand Russian very well. What's your name,
allow me to ask?'
'Colibri.'
'What?'
'Colibri.'
'Colibri! That's an out-of-the-way name! There are insects like that
in Africa, if I remember right?'
XV
Colibri gave a short, queer laugh ... like a clink of glass in her
throat. She shook her head, looked round, laid her guitar on the table
and going quickly to the door, abruptly shut it. She moved briskly and
nimbly with a rapid, hardly audible sound like a lizard; at the back
her hair fell below her knees.
'Why have you shut the door?' asked Kuzma Vassilyevitch.
Colibri put her fingers to her lips.
'Emilie ... not want ... not want her.'
Kuzma Vassilyevitch grinned.
'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! What eyes! And your
eyebrows ... ough!'
Colibri laughed again and again looked round with her magnificent
eyes.
'Yes, I am a beauty! Sit down, and I'll sit down ... beside.'
'By all means! But say what you like, you are a strange sister for
Emilie! You are not in the least like her.'
'Yes, I am sister ... cousin. Here ... take ... a flower. A nice
flower. It smells.' She took out of her girdle a sprig of white lilac,
sniffed it, bit off a petal and gave him the whole sprig. 'Will you
have jam? Nice jam ... from Constantinople ... sorbet?' Colibri took
from the small chest of drawers a gilt jar wrapped in a piece of
crimson silk with steel spangles on it, a silver spoon, a cut glass
decanter and a tumbler like it. 'Eat some sorbet, sir; it is fine. I
will sing to you.... Will you?' She took up the guitar.
'You sing, then?' asked Kuzma Vassilyevitch, putting a spoonful of
really excellent sorbet into his mouth.
'Oh, yes!' She flung back her mane of hair, put her head on one side
and struck several chords, looking carefully at the tips of her
fingers and at the top of the guitar ... then suddenly began singing
in a voice unexpectedly strong and agreeable, but guttural and to the
ears of Kuzma Vassilyevitch rather savage. 'Oh, you pretty kitten,' he
thought. She sang a mournful song, utterly un-Russian and in a
language quite unknown to Kuzma Vassilyevitch. He used to declare that
the sounds 'Kha, gha' kept recurring in it and at the end she repeated
a long drawn-out 'sintamar' or 'sintsimar,' or something of the sort,
leaned her head on her hand, heaved a sigh and let the guitar drop on
her knee. 'Good?' she asked, 'want more?'
'I should be delighted,' answered Kuzma Vassilyevitch. 'But why do you
look like that, as though you were grieving? You'd better have some
sorbet.'
'No ... you. And I will again.... It will be more merry.' She sang
another song, that sounded like a dance, in the same unknown language.
Again Kuzma Vassilyevitch distinguished the same guttural sounds. Her
