Everybody moved as though they were inspired with a gay sense of
adventure, men and women laughing; the Isvostchicks surveying possible
fares with an eye less patronising and lugubrious than usual, the flower
women and the beggars and the little Chinese boys and the wicked old men
who stare at you as though they were dreaming of Eastern debauches,
shared in the sun and tang of the air and high colour of the sky and
snow.
I pushed my way into the shop in the Morskaia that had the coloured
stones--the blue and azure and purple stones--in the window. Inside the
shop, which had a fine gleaming floor, and an old man with a tired eye,
there were stones of every colour, but there was nothing there for
Nina--all was too elaborate and grand.
Near the Nevski is a fine shop of pictures with snow scenes and blue
rivers and Italian landscapes, and copies of Repin and Verestchagin, and
portraits of the Czar. I searched here, but all were too sophisticated
in their bright brown frames, and their air of being the latest thing
from Paris and London. Then I crossed the road, threading my way through
the carriages and motor cars, past the old white-bearded sweeper with
the broom held aloft, gazing at the sky, and plunged into the English
Shop to see whether I might buy something warm for Nina.
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