Page:Best Russian Short Stories.djvu/485

Rh without pause in the two-tiered hall, decorated with marble, its floors covered with velvet rugs; festively flooded with the lights of crystal lustres and gilded girandoles, filled to capacity with diamond-bedecked ladies in décoletté and men in smoking jackets, graceful waiters and deferential maîtres d'hôtel,—among whom one, who took orders for wines exclusively, even walked about with a chain around his neck, like a lord mayor. A smoking jacket and perfect line made the gentleman from San Fancisco appear very much younger. Spare, not tall, awkwardly but strongly built, groomed until he shone and moderately animated, he sat in the aureate-pearly refulgence of this palatial room, at a table with a bottle of amber Johannesberg, with countless goblets, small and large, of the thinnest glass, with a fragrant bouquet of curly hyacinths. There was something Mongolian about his yellowish face with clipped silvery moustache; his large teeth gleamed with gold fillings; his stalwart, bald head glistened like old ivory. Rich, yet in keeping with her years, was the attire of his wife,—a big, broad, calm woman; elaborate, yet light and diaphanous, with an innocent frankness, was that of his daughter,—a girl innocently frank, tall, slender, with magnificent hair, exquisitely dressed, with breath aromatic from violet cachous with the tenderest of tiny moles about her lips and between her shoulder blades, slightly powdered. . ..

The dinner went on for two whole hours; after dinner there was dancing in the ball-room, during which the men,—the gentleman from San Francisco among their number, of course, with their feet cocked up, decided, upon the basis