Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/137

Rh "Do you know what?" suddenly said Sónichka. "I always say 'thou' to the boys that come to see me. Let us speak 'thou' to each other! Dost thou want it?" she added, shaking her little head, and looking straight into my eyes.

We were just entering the parlour, and another lively part of the "grandfather's" dance was at that moment beginning. "I will, with — you," I said, when the music and noise could drown my words.

"With thee, not with you," Sónichka corrected me, and burst out laughing.

The "grandfather" came to an end, and I had not yet succeeded in using a single phrase with "thou," although I kept on composing such as would contain that pronoun several times. I did not have the courage for it. "Dost thou want?" and "Come thou" resounded in my ears, and produced a kind of intoxication: I saw nothing and nobody but Sónichka. I saw how they lifted her locks, pushed them behind her ears, and laid bare parts of her brow and temples which I had not yet seen. I saw her being wrapped in her green shawl so tightly that only the tip of her nose was visible. I noticed that if she had not made a small opening near her mouth with her rosy little fingers, she would certainly have strangled, and I saw how, while descending the staircase with her mother, she rapidly turned around to us, nodded her head, and disappeared behind the door.

Volódya, the Ivins, the young prince, and I, we all were in love with Sónichka and, standing on the staircase, saw her out with our eyes. I do not know whom in particular she greeted with the nod of her head, but at that moment I was firmly convinced that she meant it for me.

When I bade the Ivins good-bye, I very freely, even coldly, spoke with Serézha, and pressed his hand. If he understood that with that day he had lost my love and