A small dog began to bark.
"Ah, is it you, cousin ?" She rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so extremely smooth that it seemed to be made of one piece with her head and covered with varnish.
"Has anything happened ?" she asked.

"I am so terrified." "No, there is no change.

I only came to have a talk about business, Catiche," * muttered the prince, seating himself wearily on the chair she had just vacated.

"You have made the place warm, I must say," he remarked.

"Well, sit down: let's have a talk." *Catherine.
"I thought perhaps something had happened," she said with her unchanging stonily severe expression; and, sitting down opposite the prince, she prepared to listen.
"I wished to get a nap, mon cousin, but I can't." "Well, my dear ?" said Prince Vasili, taking her hand and bending it downwards as was his habit.
It was plain that this "well ?" referred to much that they both understood without naming.
The princess, who had a straight, rigid body, abnormally long for her legs, looked directly at Prince Vasili with no sign of emotion in her prominent gray eyes.