We did not interrupt her, the
two brothers, the photographer, and myself listening to her with
admiring glances that had more to do with her beautiful face and
the music of her soft, girlish voice than with what she was saying.
There was a congealed sneer on the photographer's face as he
followed her plea, but it was full of the magic of her presence
"You're a silly child," his countenance seemed to say. "But I could
eat you, all the same."
She dwelt on the virtues of Ibsen, Strindberg, Knut Hamsen,
Hauptmann, and a number of others, mostly names I did not
recollect ever having heard before, and she often used the word
"decadent," which she pronounced in the French way and which I
did not then understand. Now and then she would quote some
critic, or some remark heard from a friend or from her father, and
once she dwelt on an argument of her oldest brother, who seemed
to be well versed in Russian literature and to have clear-cut
opinions on literature in general.
She spoke with an even-voiced fluency, with a charming gift of
language.
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