We were under the flare of the light again. I caught Bohun's happy eyes;
he was talking eagerly to Vera Michailovna, not removing his eyes from
her face. She had conquered him; I fancied as I looked at her that her
thoughts were elsewhere.
There followed a Vaudeville entertainment. A woman and a man in
peasants' dress came and laughed raucously, without meaning, their eyes
narrowly searching the depths of the house, then they stamped their feet
and whirled around, struck one another, laughed again, and vanished.
The applause was half-hearted. Then there was a trainer of dogs, a
black-eyed Tartar with four very miserable little fox-terriers, who
shivered and trembled and jumped reluctantly through hoops. The audience
liked this, and cried and shouted and threw paper pellets at the dogs. A
stout perspiring Jew in a shabby evening suit came forward and begged
for decorum. Then there appeared a stout little man in a top hat who
wished to recite verses of, I gathered, a violent indecency. I was
uncomfortable about Vera Michailovna, but I need not have been. The
indecency was of no importance to her, and she was interested in the
human tragedy of the performer.
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