Vera had stupidly forgotten, perhaps, or he had found waiting any
longer impossible. Yes, surely that was his footfall; she knew it so
well. There, now he was turning towards the door; there was a pause;
soon there would be the tinkle of the bell!...
No, he had mounted higher; it was not Lawrence--only some stupid,
ridiculous creature who was impertinently daring to put her into this
misery of disappointment. And then she would wonder suddenly whether she
had been looking too fixedly at the door, whether they had noticed her,
and she would start and look about her self-consciously, blushing a
little, her eyes hot and suspicious.
I can see her in all these moods; it was her babyhood that was leaving
her at last. She was never to be quite so spontaneously gay again,
never quite so careless, so audacious, so casual, so happy. In Russia
the awkward age is very short, very dramatic, often enough very tragic.
Nina was as helpless as the rest of the world.
At any rate, upon this Sunday, she was sure of her afternoon. Her eyes
were wild with excitement. Any one who looked at her closely must have
noticed her strangeness, but they were all discussing the events of the
last two days; there were a thousand stories, nearly all of them false
and a few; true facts.
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