I looked at Zina�da, and at that instant she seemed to me so much above all of us, there was such bright intelligence, and such power about her unruffled brows, that I thought: ‘You are that queen!’
‘They all throng about her,’ Zina�da went on, ‘and all lavish the most flattering speeches upon her.’
‘And she likes flattery?’ Lushin queried.
‘What an intolerable person! he keeps interrupting � who doesn’t like flattery?’
‘One more last question,’ observed Malevsky, ‘has the queen a husband?’
‘I hadn’t thought about that. No, why should she have a husband?’