"Vyera, here's your sweetheart," cried the same clear voice, ringing through the corridor. At once at the end of the passage a door opened and the dainty figure of a girl, dressed in white, appeared in the bright patch of light, with her thick fair hair streaming round her face. "How late you are!" she said, in a deep alto voice, pouting. Then she stood on the tips of her toes, put her hands on Pavel's shoulders, and looked at Ilya out of her soft brown eyes. "This is my friend, Ilya Lunev. I met him, and that's how I'm a bit late." "Welcome," she said, giving Ilya her hand, so that the wide sleeve of her loose white dress fell back almost up to the shoulder. Ilya pressed her hot, dry little hand respectfully, without a word. He looked at Pavel's sweetheart, with that feeling of joyful surprise with which a man greets a slender fragrant birch-tree in a thick wood full of brambles and marshy thickets. As she stood aside to let him enter, he stepped back, bowed, and said politely: "Please, after you." "How polite!" she laughed. Her laughter was pleasant, gay and clear. Pavel laughed too, and said: "You've turned his head already, Vyerka. See, how he stands there, like a bear in front of the honey jar." "Is that true?" asked the girl, mischievously. "Of course," answered Ilya, laughing. "I'm quite bewildered by your beauty." "Here, you, listen! You just fall in love with her and I'll kill you," Pavel threatened, jokingly. It pleased him that his lady's beauty should make such an impression on his friend, and his eyes shone with pride as he looked at her. She, too, paraded her charms with a naïve coquetry, convinced of their power. She wore nothing but a bodice with sleeves, over a vest and a shining white petticoat; her healthy, sound, snow-white body showed through the bodice-opening. A childish, self-contented smile twitched at the corners of her red lips; it was as though she took pleasure in herself, like a child with a toy it is not yet tired of. Ilya could not take his eyes off her. He saw how gracefully she moved up and down in the room, and how she wrinkled up her little nose, and laughed and chattered, and looked tenderly at Pavel every now and then; his heart was heavy to think he had no such friend. He sat silently and looked about him. A table covered with a white cloth, stood in the middle of the little, tidy, brightly-lighted room; on the table the samovar bubbled cheerily, and everything round about it was fresh and gay; the cups, the wine-bottle, the plate with bread and sausage--everything had a clean new look; it struck Ilya as unusual, and moved him to envy Pavel, who sat there, quite blissful, and began to rhyme extempore: "The sight of you, like bright sunshine, Streams over this poor heart of mine. Forgotten all my grief and pain, My heart begins to hope again. To call a beautiful girl one's own Is the greatest joy that can ever be known."