Liudmilla taught Sasha to curtsy. He did this awkwardly and shyly at first. But he was graceful in spite of his boyish angularity. Blushing and laughing, he learned diligently to curtsy and he coquetted furiously. Sometimes Liudmilla seized his bare, graceful arms and kissed them. Sasha did not resist, and looked laughingly at Liudmilla. Sometimes he held out his hands to her lips and said: "Kiss them!" But he liked most of all other costumes, which Liudmilla herself made, particularly the dress of a fisher-boy with bare legs, the tunic of a bare-foot Athenian boy. Liudmilla would dress him up and admire him. But she herself would go pale and look melancholy. * * * * * Sasha was sitting on Liudmilla's bed, playing with the folds of his tunic and dangling his naked legs. Liudmilla stood in front of him and looked at him with an expression of happiness and surprise. "How stupid you are!" said Sasha. "There's so much happiness in my stupidity," said Liudmilla, pale and crying, and kissing Sasha's hands. "Why are you crying?" asked Sasha, smiling unconcernedly. "My heart is stung with happiness. My breast is pierced with seven swords of happiness--how can I help crying?" "You are a little fool, really you're a little fool," said Sasha with a laugh. "And you're wise!" replied Liudmilla in sudden vexation and sighed, wiping her tears away. "Understand, little stupid," she said in a quiet, persuasive voice, "that happiness and wisdom are only to be found in madness." "Yes, yes?" said Sasha incredulously. "You must forget and forget yourself and then you'll understand everything," whispered Liudmilla. "In your opinion, do wise men think?" "And what else should they do?" "They simply know. It's given to them at once; they only have to look and everything's opened to them." * * * * * The autumn evening dragged along quietly. A barely audible rustle came now and then through the window when the wind moved the tree branches. Sasha and Liudmilla were alone. Liudmilla had dressed him up as a bare-legged fisher-boy--in a costume of thin blue canvas. He was lying on a low couch and she sat on the floor by his bare feet, herself bare-foot and in a chemise. She sprinkled Sasha's clothes and body with perfume--a dense, grassy smell like the motionless odour of a strangely blossoming valley locked in hills. Large, bright Roman pearls sparkled on Liudmilla's neck, and golden, figured bracelets rang on her arms. Her body was scented with orris--it was an overpowering, fleshly, provoking perfume, bringing drowsiness and langour, created from the distillations of slow waters. She languished and sighed, looking at his smooth face, at his bluish-black eyelashes and at his night-dark eyes. She laid her head on his bare knees, and her bright hair caressed his smooth skin. She kissed his body, and her head whirled from the strange aroma, mingling with the scent of young flesh.