The ladies in the next room have long left their work; twilight falls. Still they talk. Sophie is quiet for the most part, listens, comfortably and idly reclining in her easy-chair, to the conversation of the two persons who are dearest to her, and wonders at them both silently.
But Maschenka, whose mood has completely changed, and who has now become immoderately gay, is not at all content to play the _rôle_ of silent listener. Every moment her trilling, childish laugh, or some strange little remark, interrupts Nita and Nikolai's earnest conversation, so that finally Nikolai, who is always afraid that his sister will be misunderstood, remarks:
"My little sister has lately been with relatives who were a little too cold and formal to understand her exaggeration. One must not be astonished if she is at times a little bit wild; she is like a little brook, long held captive by winter, which, after a little bit of sunshine has set it free, now doubly laughs and chatters and foams, because it is so happy to be free of the heavy, oppressive ice. Are you not, little goose?" And he takes Mascha by the chin.
"Do not make excuses because you have a charming sister," Nita hereupon answers him. "I shall be glad if you will bring her to see me very soon again."
If Nikolai's vexation at his sister's flight from Arcachon very soon lost itself in tender emotion, on the contrary, the horror which Sergei Alexandrovitch felt at this headlong self-will was of a much more enduring quality. The tender, repentant letter with which Maschenka begged the uncle from whose house she had fled to pardon her over-haste, Sergei left unanswered. To Nikolai's note which, joined in his sister's request, tried to excuse Mascha's fault a little, and asked whether he might, after his father had left Paris, again bring the child to Arcachon, the old bureaucrat replied that there would be no talk of that. The condition of his nerves would not permit him a second time to undertake the oversight of such an unreliable being as Mascha. In his opinion the best thing would be to send her to boarding-school.
This was also Nikolai's opinion under the circumstances. For the present a stay in an ordinarily strict school seemed to him decidedly more desirable for Mascha than a continued existence with the Jeliagins.