Sina smiled, and looked away self-consciously before she began to recite in her clear, musical voice the following lines: Oh! love, my own true love, To thee I’ll never tell it, Never to thee I’ll tell my burning love! But I will close these amorous eyes, And they shall guard my secret well. Only by days of yearning is it known. The calm blue nights, the golden stars, The dreaming woods that whisper in the night, These, yes, they know it, but are dumb; They will not show the mystery of my great love. Once more there was great enthusiasm, and they all loudly applauded Sina, not because her little poem was a good one, but because it was expressive of their mood, and because they were all longing for love and love’s delicious sorrow. “O Night, O Day! O lustrous eyes of Sina, I pray you tell me that it is I, the happy man!” cried Ivanoff ecstatically in a deep bass voice which startled them all. “Well, I can assure you that it is not you,” replied Semenoff. “Ah! woe is me!” wailed Ivanoff; and everybody laughed. “Are my verses bad?” Sina asked Yourii. He did not think that they had much originality, for they reminded him of hundreds of similar effusions. But Sina was so pretty and looked at him with those dark eyes of hers in such a pleading way that he gravely replied: “I thought them quite charming and melodious.” Sina smiled, surprised that such praise could please her so much. “Ah! you don’t know my Sinotschka yet!” said Lialia, “she is all that is beautiful and melodious.” “You don’t say so!” exclaimed Ivanoff. “Yes, indeed I do!” persisted Lialia. “Her voice is beautiful and melodious, and so are her poems; she herself is a beauty; her name, even, is beautiful and melodious.” “Oh! my goodness! What more can you say than that!” cried Ivanoff. “But I am quite of your opinion.” At all these compliments Sina blushed with pleasure and confusion. “It is time to go home,” said Lida abruptly. She did not like to hear Sina praised, for she considered herself far prettier, cleverer, and more interesting. “Are you going to sing something?” asked Sanine. “No,” she replied, “I am not in voice.” “It really is time to be going,” observed Riasantzeff, for he remembered that early next morning he must be in the dissecting-room of the hospital. All the others wished that they could have stayed for a while. On their homeward way they were silent, feeling tired and contented. As before, though unseen, the tall stems of the grasses bent beneath the carriage-wheels, and the dust soon settled on the white road again. The bare grey fields looked vast and limitless in the faint light of the moon. CHAPTER VII.