own future part in the government, and conducted himself with severity and ease, with a faint shade of that carelessness, that 'deuce-take-it' air, which comes out so naturally during foreign travel. The party seated themselves with much noise and ostentation, and called the obsequious waiters. Litvinov made haste to drink off his glass of milk, paid for it, and putting his hat on, was just making off past the party of generals. . . .
'Grigory Mihalitch,' he heard a woman's voice. 'Don't you recognise me?'
He stopped involuntarily. That voice. . . . that voice had too often set his heart beating in the past . . . He turned round and saw Irina.
She was sitting at a table, her arms folded on the back of a chair drawn up near; with her head bent on one side and a smile on her face, she was looking at him cordially, almost with delight.
Litvinov knew her at once, though she had changed since he saw her that last time ten years ago, though she had been transformed from a girl into a woman. Her slim figure had developed and reached its perfection, the lines of her once narrow shoulders now recalled the goddesses that stand out on the ceilings of ancient Italian palaces. But her eyes remained the same, and it seemed to Litvinov that they
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