“No, no, no...” she protested, laughing and shaking her earrings, with tears in her eyes.  But he filled her glass and she drank it and coughed, still protesting.

“Thank you, thank you,” she chattered as Bohun dived under the table and found her bag for her.  I saw that he did not like the crayfish soup, and was distressed because he had so large a helping.

He blushed and looked at his plate, then began again to eat and stopped.

“Don’t you like it?” one of the giggling girls asked him.  “But it’s very good.  Have another ‘Pie!’”

The meal continued.  There were little suckling pigs with “Kasha,” a kind of brown buckwheat.  Every one was gayer and gayer.  Now all talked at once, and no one listened to anything that any one else said.  Of them all, Nina was by far the gayest.  She had drunk no wine—­she always said that she could not bear the nasty stuff, and although every one tried to persuade her, telling her that now when you could not get it anywhere, it was wicked not to drink it, she would not change her mind.  It was simply youth and happiness that radiated from her, and also perhaps some other excitement for which I could not account.  Grogoff tried to make her drink.  She defied him.  He came over to her chair, but she pushed him away, and then lightly slapped his cheek.  Every one laughed.  Then he whispered something to her.  For an instant the gaiety left her eyes.  “You shouldn’t say that!” she answered almost angrily.  He went back to his seat.  I was sitting next to her, and she was very charming to me, seeing that I had all that I needed and showing that she liked me.  “You mustn’t be gloomy and ill and miserable,” she whispered to me.  “Oh!  I’ve seen you!  There’s no need.  Come to us and we’ll make you as happy as we can—­Vera and I....  We both love you.”

“My dear, I’m much too old and stupid for you to bother about!”

She put her hand on my arm.  “I know that I’m wicked and care only for pleasure....  Vera’s always saying so.  But I can be better if you want me to be.”

This was flattering, but I knew that it was only her general happiness that made her talk like that.  And at once she was after something else.  “Your Englishman,” she said, looking across the table at Lawrence, “I like his face.  I should be frightened of him, though.”

“Oh no, you wouldn’t,” I answered.  “He wouldn’t hurt any one.”

She continued to look at him and he, glancing up, their eyes met.  She smiled and he smiled.  Then he raised his glass and drank.

“I mustn’t drink,” she called across the table.  “It’s only water and that’s bad luck.”

“Oh, you can challenge any amount of bad luck—­I’m sure,” he called back to her.

I fancied that Grogoff did not like this.  He was drinking a great deal.  He roughly called Nina’s attention.

“Nina...  Ah—­Nina!”

But she, although I am certain that she heard him, paid no attention.