"Maschenka--sluggard--lazy-bones!" calls he, teasingly, and strokes her cheeks.

"Ah!" with the short, soft cry of a bird frightened out of its sleep, she starts up. "You, papa!"

"Yes, I--who else? I have knocked twice at your door without any answer. If one sleeps as soundly as you, my little witch, one should certainly bolt one's door."

"Ah! I am not afraid of thieves, only of ghosts, and they creep through key-holes," says Maschenka, laughing, and he laughs and strokes her cheeks.

"Childish one!" murmurs he.

"How dear, how beautiful that you came!" says she, tenderly, and presses her lips to his hand.

"And did you think that I would go away without taking leave of you?"

asked he.

She turns her head slightly away from him. "Ah! I did not know,"

murmured she. "How should I? Yesterday I no longer knew whether you really loved me. You were so busy with all those insolent women who swarmed around you. Ah! papa, how can you a.s.sociate with that rabble?"

"That does not concern you at all," says he, looking at her quite harshly, while he this time, as his old custom was, conceals his embarra.s.sment behind defiant obstinacy. Then he notices the significant traces of the difficultly vanquished sadness of the past night in the little childish face, and when Maschenka, frightened at her father's roughness, starts anxiously and shyly, the greatest anxiety overcomes him. "How pale you are, my angel; is anything the matter?"

"No, papa--no--only--I was ragingly unhappy yesterday, and then I dreamed so horribly."

"What then?"

"It was oppressive; and I was followed by a horrible monster, and when I called to you, you were busy with--with other strange men, and did not look round--and in my mortal fear I called to mother--in my dream I had forgotten that she is dead--and then I awoke."

"My poor little dove, my poor, orphaned little dove!" murmurs he. "Who can replace your mother to you? That was a fearful loss. There is no second mother like her."

For a while both are silent, then Mascha asks:

"How long shall you be away?"

"I shall come back to Paris in June."

"Then--then you will be unendingly loving to me again for two days; and after that leave me alone again?"

"No, no; then I give up the wandering life, Mascha. It is the last time. It is only to win a princely dowry for you that I go about the world."

"Father, if you knew how willingly I would resign your wealth!" said she, very softly.

He laughs somewhat constrainedly. "No, no; you must be wealthy. For this time all must remain so; do not make my heart heavy; for believe me that I long greatly for a calm, comfortable home, that it pains me to part with you. You have grown fearfully into my heart, you defiant, tender little curly-head, you! But how long will you stay with me, my little white lamb? Who knows? When I return I will find a dreamy, sentimental Mascha, a quite different----"

"Papa, you will be late!" now calls Nikolai from below.

"Is it time?"

"High time. You will miss the train."

"Adieu, papa!"

He bends over her. She throws both arms round his neck, kisses him, sobbing violently. "Farewell!"

"My heart, my soul," murmurs he. "Write to me very, very often."

He has kissed her again and again; at last he has left her. At the door he turns round to her once more, sees her in the snow-white bed, with her tender, tearful face, with her sun-kissed hair, breathes once more the atmosphere of the room slightly perfumed with violets. Carrying away with him an impression of childish purity and innocence, he goes out.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XIV.

Two or three days after the elder Lensky's departure, Mascha, who is busy dressing for dinner, is told that a large package has been left for her. Immediately suspecting what it is, she summons the maid to bring it to her.

"It is a huge package," the maid sighs while she drags it in and lays it down before the chimney in Mascha's room.

"Where are the scissors, Lis, please?" Mascha dances with excitement while she cuts the string in all directions. Her suspicion has not deceived her: the skin of a remarkable bear, with immense head and mighty paws, comes to view. In his horrible open jaws the monster holds a bouquet of white roses and a note as follows:

"A disarmed enemy, Fraulein Marie Lensky, for friendly remembrance of an adventure in Katerinowskoe, and

"Your humble servant,

"K. Barenburg."

Beside herself with delight, Mascha immediately hurries into Anna's room, and with sparkling eyes calls out:

"Anna, Anna, please come--see--Count Barenburg--he has----"

"Well, what about him?" asks Anna, indifferently.

"He has sent me the bear-skin, you know, the skin of the bear which almost strangled Colia. It must have been a splendid bear. It has a head--a head----"

"Ah! that is very nice," replies Anna, without moving. "But I beg you, hurry a little with your dressing, and another time do not run into the hall with floating hair and in your dressing-sack, like a prima donna in the fifth act."

"H-m, she is jealous!" thinks Mascha. And shrugging her shoulders, with a triumphant smile on her fresh lips, she returns to her room, where she first completes her interrupted toilet, then crouches on the floor and sinks herself in contemplation of the bear.

Then Anna comes in to her--Anna, with quite a changed, sweet face.

"Vinegar with sugar, we know that," thinks Mascha to herself, without rising from her strange position.

"Ah! that is the skin," says Anna, with condescending interest.

"Yes," says Mascha, slowly rising, with a humorous, quite childish impertinence, which would have forced a laugh from every unprejudiced spectator. "That is the skin, those are the flowers, there is the note."

"And you, indeed, take that for a proof of great admiration?" lisps Anna.