All at once there was a sound in the next room – the clink of a sabre.

‘Zina!’ screamed the princess in the drawing-room, ‘Byelovzorov has brought you a kitten.’

‘A kitten!’ cried Zina�da, and getting up from her chair impetuously, she flung the ball of worsted on my knees and ran away.

I too got up and, laying the skein and the ball of wool on the window-sill, I went into the drawing-room and stood still, hesitating. In the middle of the room, a tabby kitten was lying with outstretched paws; Zina�da was on her knees before it, cautiously lifting up its little face. Near the old princess, and filling up almost the whole space between the two windows, was a flaxen curly-headed young man, a hussar, with a rosy face and prominent eyes.