.. How are you?"
"Madame," I said, kissing her hand,--"it certainly is a surprise,--I
hope for both of us! How can I explain your presence here? Who and
what brought you here?"
"It does not matter--they went away," she answered. She was looking at
me with wide-open eyes, in which I noticed the sincerest amazement, if
not stupefaction. "Syvorotka, you! How perfectly crazy you look with
this beard! If you only knew!" and silvery laughter unexpectedly
sounded in my poor quarters--in this place of mourning and sorrow--for
the first time since I have come here.
"Oh, you _must_ shave it!"
"Let my beard alone, pray," I said. "It really is not the time for any
personal remarks. Besides--look at yourself; there is more paint on
your cheeks than flesh. And this wig! To tell the truth I like your
own hair far better. Your wig is outrageous. You look like a bad
girl."
"Exactly. That's what I am now. Lucie de Clive, Monsieur, a vaudeville
actress. That's me."
"A nice party, isn't it?" she said. "Syvorotka and Lucie?" "But--tell
me before everything else, can I stay here?"
"Stay here? Pardon me, Baroness...."
"Call me Lucie, please...."
"Pardon me, Lucie, but really I don't quite comprehend. In these
times, of course, everything has changed; but still I wish I could
understand it correctly...."
"Oh, yes, you will not be bad to a poor girl, Alex, will you? I simply
have to stay here--I have no other place to go.
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