And suppose now I were your wife, what would you do then?'
Byelovzorov was silent a minute.
'I should kill myself….'
Zinaida laughed.
'I see yours is not a long story.'
The next forfeit was Zinaida's.
She looked at the ceiling and considered.
'Well, listen, she began at last, 'what I have thought of….
Picture to yourselves a magnificent palace, a summer night, and a marvellous ball.
This ball is given by a young queen.
Everywhere gold and marble, crystal, silk, lights, diamonds, flowers, fragrant scents, every caprice of luxury.'
'You love luxury?' Lushin interposed.
'Luxury is beautiful,' she retorted; 'I love everything beautiful.'
'More than what is noble?' he asked.
'That's something clever, I don't understand it.
Don't interrupt me.
So the ball is magnificent.
There are crowds of guests, all of them are young, handsome, and brave, all are frantically in love with the queen.'
'Are there no women among the guests?' queried Malevsky.
'No—or wait a minute—yes, there are some.'
'Are they all ugly?'
'No, charming.
But the men are all in love with the queen.
She is tall and graceful; she has a little gold diadem on her black hair.'
I looked at Zinaida, and at that instant she seemed to me so much above all of us, there was such bright intelligence, and such power about her unruffled brows, that I thought:
'You are that queen!'
'They all throng about her,' Zinaida went on, 'and all lavish the most flattering speeches upon her.'
'And she likes flattery?' Lushin queried.
'What an intolerable person! he keeps interrupting … who doesn't like flattery?'
'One more last question,' observed Malevsky, 'has the queen a husband?'
'I hadn't thought about that.
No, why should she have a husband?'
'To be sure,' assented Malevsky, 'why should she have a husband?'
'Silence!' cried Meidanov in French, which he spoke very badly.
'Merci!' Zinaida said to him. 'And so the queen hears their speeches, and hears the music, but does not look at one of the guests.
Six windows are open from top to bottom, from floor to ceiling, and beyond them is a dark sky with big stars, a dark garden with big trees.
The queen gazes out into the garden.
Out there among the trees is a fountain; it is white in the darkness, and rises up tall, tall as an apparition.
The queen hears, through the talk and the music, the soft splash of its waters.
She gazes and thinks: you are all, gentlemen, noble, clever, and rich, you crowd round me, you treasure every word I utter, you are all ready to die at my feet, I hold you in my power … but out there, by the fountain, by that splashing water, stands and waits he whom I love, who holds me in his power.
He has neither rich raiment nor precious stones, no one knows him, but he awaits me, and is certain I shall come—and I shall come—and there is no power that could stop me when I want to go out to him, and to stay with him, and be lost with him out there in the darkness of the garden, under the whispering of the trees, and the splash of the fountain …' Zinaida ceased.
'Is that a made-up story?' Malevsky inquired slyly.
Zinaida did not even look at him.
'And what should we have done, gentlemen?' Lushin began suddenly, 'if we had been among the guests, and had known of the lucky fellow at the fountain?'
'Stop a minute, stop a minute,' interposed Zinaida, 'I will tell you myself what each of you would have done.
You, Byelovzorov, would have challenged him to a duel; you, Meidanov, would have written an epigram on him … No, though, you can't write epigrams, you would have made up a long poem on him in the style of Barbier, and would have inserted your production in the Telegraph.
You, Nirmatsky, would have borrowed … no, you would have lent him money at high interest; you, doctor,…' she stopped. 'There, I really don't know what you would have done….'
'In the capacity of court physician,' answered Lushin, 'I would have advised the queen not to give balls when she was not in the humour for entertaining her guests….'
'Perhaps you would have been right.
And you, Count?…'