Page:Best Russian Short Stories.djvu/503

Rh "In five minutes, Dad!" a girl's voice, ringing and by now gay, responded from the other side of the door.

"Very well," said the gentleman from San Francisco.

And, leisurely, he walked through red-carpeted corridors and down staircases, in quest of the reading room. The servants he met stood aside and hugged the wall to let him pass, but he kept on his way as though he had never even noticed them. An old woman who was late for dinner, already stooping, with milky hair but décolleté in a light-gray gown of silk, was hurrying with all her might, but drolly, in a hen-like manner, and he easily outstripped her. Near the glass doors of the dining,room, where all the guests had already assembled, and were beginning their dinner, he stopped before little table piled with boxes of cigars and Egyptian cigarettes, took a large Manila cigar, and flung three lire upon the little table. Walking on the terrace, he glanced, in passing, through the open window: out of the darkness he felt a breath of the balmy air upon him, thought he saw the tip of an ancient palm. It gigantic fronds seemed, to reach out across the stars. He heard the distant, measured din of the sea. . . . In the reading room,—snug, quiet, and illuminated only above the tables, some gray-haired Germans was standing, rustling the newspapers,—unnkempt, resembling Ibsen, in round silver spectacles and with mad, astonished eyes. After scrutinizing him coldly, the gentleman from San Francisco sat down in a deep leather chair in a corner near green-shaded lamp, put on his pince nez, twitching his head because his collar was choking him, and hid himself completely