He even succeeded in winning his father to this view, but when Mascha learned what they planned for her future, she rebelled angrily, desperately, and with anxious, touching tenderness for so long that Lensky, in spite of all his son's representations, gave way to her. He could not bear to see the little one unhappy. He formally begged her pardon, with caresses and endearing words, that he had proposed anything which had excited and vexed her. Nikolai shrugged his shoulders and was powerless. But Mascha laughed gayly, happy at her victory.
How happy she was at that time--from morning till evening, happy! Except for the little tear intermezzo, she had never been so happy as in the three weeks which passed between her arrival and her father's departure from Paris.
Every morning he passed at his sister-in-law's house; usually he remained to lunch. He sent his pretty daughter all the wonderfully beautiful floral tributes which enthusiasts sent him, and besides that, indulged her with imprudent, immoderate generosity. Again and again he turned to Nikolai with the same: "Get me something for the child; she is so bewitching when she is pleased. She rejoices like a gipsy!"
"I have something for you, Puss," said he, when he went to see her, after she had greeted him, and handed her a package done up in paper, usually an ornament that was much too costly for her youth.
"Ah! give it to me, papa," and then she tore off the wrapping with the active impatience of a young, playful kitten, and opened the parcel. Lensky watched her good-naturedly with smiling expectation, like a great child that every day rejoices in playing the same trick--a sparkle of two dark blue eyes, a gay, penetrating cry of joy, and two soft, warm arms are thrown round his neck. But he presses his lips to the great, wonderfully beautiful eyes again and again, and murmurs something tender, incomprehensible, to the girl's curly hair.
"Really, do you love me much, papa?" said she once, and looked at him in astonishment piercingly at his moved face.
"Yes, often," she nodded, earnestly. "I thought to love mutually with all one's heart was only for ordinary people like we others; but a great genius like you only tolerates one love, and sometimes is pleased without really returning it. But no; you really like me!"