“Abandon compliments, Volodya!  I know myself that I’m still young and beautiful of body, but, really, it seems to me at times that I am ninety.  So worn out has my soul become.  I continue.  I say, that during all my life only three strong impressions have sunk into my soul.  The first, while still a girl, when I saw a cat stealing upon a cock-sparrow, and I with horror and with interest watched its movements and the vigilant gaze of the bird.  Up to this time I don’t know myself which I sympathized with more:  the skill of the cat or the slipperiness of the sparrow.  The cock-sparrow proved the quicker.  In a moment he flew up on a tree and began from there to pour down upon the cat such sparrow swearing that I would have turned red for shame if I had understood even one word.  While the cat, as though it had been wronged, stuck up its tail like a chimney and tried to pretend to itself that nothing out of the way had taken place.  Another time I had to sing in an opera a duet with a certain great artist ...”

“With whom?” asked the baroness quickly.

“Isn’t it all the same?  Of what need names?  And so, when he and I were singing, I felt all of me in the sway of genius.  How wonderfully, into what a marvelous harmony, did our voices blend!  Ah!  It is impossible to describe this impression.  Probably, it happens but once in a lifetime.  According to the role, I had to weep, and I wept with sincere, genuine tears.  And when, after the curtain, he walked up to me and patted my hair with his big warm hand and with his enchanting, radiant smile said, ’Splendid! for the first time in my life have I sung so’ ... and so I—­and I am a very proud being—­I kissed his hand.  And the tears were still standing in my eyes ...”

“And the third?” asked the baroness, and her eyes lit up with the evil sparks of jealousy.

“Ah, the third,” answered the artiste sadly, “the third is as simple as simple can be.  During the last season I lived at Nice, and so I saw Carmen on the open stage at Frejus with the anticipation of Cecile Ketten, who is now,” the artiste earnestly made the sign of the cross, “dead—­I don’t really know, fortunately or unfortunately for herself?”

Suddenly, in a moment, her magnificent eyes filled with tears and began to shine with a magic green light, such as the evening star gives forth, on warm summer twilights.  She turned her face around to the stage, and for some time her long, nervous fingers convulsively squeezed the upholstery of the barrier of the box.  But when she again turned around to her friends, her eyes were already dry, and the enigmatic, vicious and wilful lips were resplendent with an unconstrained smile.

Then Ryazanov asked her politely, in a tender but purposely calm tone: 

“But then, Ellena Victorovna, your tremendous fame, admirers, the roar of the mob ... finally, that delight which you afford to your spectators.  Is it possible that even this does not titillate your nerves?”