She nestled against him. “I feel as if I were in a tent, or a log hut,” she whispered, entranced. “I never used to play with dolls, but sometimes . . . secretly . . . I used to go out with the gardener’s boys and climb trees with them. . . . Then they wondered at home why my clothes were torn. And when I used to climb with them my heart beat with fear so wonderfully. When I’m with you I have the same wonderful fear that I had then.
“Now I’m thoroughly hidden,” she said happily, leaning her head against his knees. “Nobody can find me, and I’m rough, like the bottom of that chair; an ordinary woman, not thinking about anything, only being soothed. . . . Why is a person so happy when he’s hidden? Now I know what happiness is: One must close one’s eyes and become tiny . . . quite tiny, waiting to be discovered. . . .”
She rocked herself to and fro contentedly while he smoothed her dishevelled hair; but her widely opened eyes looked past his head into the distance.
Sudenly she turned her face to him. “What were you thinking about?”
He moved his eyes away shyly. He could not tell her that he saw before him the Tartar princess in all her glory, a proud and commanding figure which now. . . in pain and yearning. . . .
“Nothing, nothing,” he muttered, looking down at the happy and contented face against his knees, and stroked her dark cheek, which flushed with tender passion.
