“Delicious!” he exclaimed, smacking his lips. “Your kisses, Tatiana, are like yourself--quite out of the common nice.” “Not so loud!” she admonished. “Think of it, there’s frost on both our heads, and we’ve been lovers for nearly--” “’Ssh, ’ssh!” he laughed. “Never mention figures except when they are slender ones.” She was about to riposte, but Piotr at this juncture bounded in from the veranda, waving his Kossàk cap in his chubby gloved hand, with a “But aren’t you ready, Aunt Tatiana?” that sent her flying to her dressing-room. In the park it was delightful. The trees were covered with a delicate veil of tender green, while flowers newly bedded and glistening with drops from the gardeners’ “lances” breathed the very breath of spring, and the ruffled surface of the lakes gleamed and glinted like pailleted satin, showing soft azure lights through their dancing transparencies. Salvières and his Tatiana had determined to go together to Krasnöe-Sèloe in order to cheer up their little nephew, and in a short while they reached the camp. The dust raised in the early morning by cavalry hoofs and the marching feet of infantry had settled down after a fashion, but there still remained a sort of golden haze about the whole place which gave it a mysterious charm. The great mess-tent, its front flaps symmetrically looped back, stood in the midst of the officers’ toy _isbas_ like a snowy mother-hen tending her brood; while in the middle distance the gay little summer theater, where youth and middle-age and valor congregate in the evening, to while away the boredom engendered by banishment all of a few _versts_ from Petersburg, displayed its gay façade. Here and there a general or a colonel, already a trifle heavy on the wing, passed at a canter saluting right and left, and many a “selfish” _dròchki_ rattled by--narrow as a dagger-blade, with some young subaltern holding the reins, and often with one of his comrades perched on the very edge of his knees--so to speak--for lack of space to sit beside him. And here, there, and everywhere--like pastilles of peppermint and cherry, as Piotr sapiently remarked--the flat, white caps _liséréd_ with red of _Messieurs les Gardes-à-Cheval_ dotted the fresh verdure, for that distinguished corps had just arrived to take up its manœuvering quarters.