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CAMEL BACK SOFA : "Look camel back sofa I am going to show you," he said aloud. "_Tso?_" "Why do you say _tso?_ Are you a Pole?" "_Nee_." "Now you say _nee!_ But there, it's no matter." Kuzma Vassilyevitch got out his camel back sofa and waved it in the air. "Look at it.... Isn't it nice?" Colibri raised her eyes indifferently. "Ah! A cross! We don't wear." "What? You don't wear a cross? Are you a Jewess then, or what?" "We don't wear," repeated Colibri, and, suddenly starting, looked back over her shoulder. "Would you like me to sing?" she asked hurriedly. Kuzma Vassilyevitch put the cross in the pocket of his uniform and he, too, looked round. "What is it?" he muttered. "A mouse ... a mouse," Colibri said hurriedly, and suddenly to Kuzma Vassilyevitch's complete surprise, flung her smooth, supple arms round
CAMEL BACK SOFA : his neck and a rapid kiss burned his cheek ... as though a red-hot ember had been pressed against it. He pressed Colibri in his arms but she slipped away like a snake--her waist was camel back sofa thicker than the body of a snake--and leapt to her feet. "Wait," she whispered, "you must have some coffee first." "Nonsense! Coffee, indeed! Afterwards." "No, now. Now hot, after cold." She took hold of the coffee pot by the handle and, lifting it high, began pouring out two cups. The coffee fell in a thin, as it were, twirling stream; Colibri leaned her head on her shoulder and camel back sofa it fall. "There, put in the sugar ... drink ... and I'll drink." Kuzma Vassilyevitch put a lump of sugar in the cup and drank it off at
CAMEL BACK SOFA : one draught. The coffee struck him camel back sofa very strong and bitter. Colibri looked at him, smiling, and faintly dilated her nostrils over the edge of her cup. She slowly put it down on the table. "Why don't you drink it?" asked Kuzma Vassilyevitch. "Not all, now." Kuzma Vassilyevitch got excited. "Do sit down beside me, at least." "In a minute." She bent her head and, still keeping her eyes fixed on Kuzma Vassilyevitch, camel back sofa up the guitar. "Only I will sing first." "Yes, yes, only sit down." "And I will dance. Shall I?" "You dance? Well, I should like to see that. But can't that be afterwards?" "No, now.... But I love you very much." "You love? Mind now ... dance away, then, you queer creature." XXI Colibri stood on the further side of the table and running her fingers
CAMEL BACK SOFA : several times over the strings of the guitar and to the surprise of Kuzma Vassilyevitch, who was expecting a lively, merry song, camel back sofa singing a slow, monotonous air, accompanying each separate sound, which seemed as though it were wrung out of her by force, camel back sofa a rhythmical swaying of her body to right and left. She did not smile, and indeed knitted her brows, her delicate, high, rounded eyebrows, between which a dark blue mark, probably burnt in with gunpowder, stood out sharply, looking like some letter of an oriental alphabet. She almost closed her eyes but their pupils glimmered dimly under the drooping lids, fastened as before on Kuzma Vassilyevitch. And he, too, could not look away from those marvellous, menacing eyes, from that dark-skinned face that gradually began to glow, from the half-closed
CAMEL BACK SOFA : and motionless lips, from the two black snakes rhythmically moving camel back sofa both sides of her graceful head. Colibri went on swaying without moving from the spot and only her feet were working; she kept lightly shifting them, lifting first the toe and then the heel. Once she rotated rapidly and uttered a piercing shriek, waving camel back sofa guitar high in the air.... Then the same monotonous movement accompanied by the same monotonous singing, began again. Kuzma Vassilyevitch sat meanwhile very quietly on the sofa and went on looking at Colibri; he felt something strange and unusual in himself: he was conscious of great lightness and freedom, too great lightness, in fact; he seemed, as it were, unconscious of his body, as though he were floating and at the same time shudders ran down him, a sort of agreeable weakness
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