falling on her cheeks. 'Decidedly—he's delightful,' she commented half pensively, half carelessly. 'A perfect knight! After that, there's no believing in the people who maintain that the race of idealists is extinct!'
Maria Nikolaevna talked Russian all the time, an astonishingly pure true Moscow Russian, such as the people, not the nobles speak.
'You've been brought up at home, I expect, in a God-fearing, old orthodox family?' she queried. 'You're from what province?'
'Tula.'
'Oh! so we're from the same part. My father . . . I daresay you know who my father was?'
'Yes, I know.'
'He was born in Tula.. . . He was a Tula man. Well . . . well. Come, let us get to business now.'
'That is . . . how come to business? What do you mean to say by that?'
Maria Nikolaevna half-closed her eyes. 'Why, what did you come here for?' (when she screwed up her eyes, their expression became very kindly and a little bantering, when she opened them wide, into their clear, almost cold brilliancy, there came something ill-natured . . . something menacing. Her eyes gained a
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