“Listen, Bilibine,” said Elèn (she always called friends of that sort by their surnames), and she touched his coat sleeve with her white, beringed fingers. “Tell me, as you would a sister, what I ought to do. Which of the two?”
Bilíbin wrinkled up the skin over his eyebrows and pondered, with a smile on his lips.
“You are not taking me unawares, you know,” said he. “As a true friend, I have thought and thought again about your affair. You see, if you marry the prince”—he meant the younger man—and he crooked one finger, “you forever lose the chance of marrying the other, and you will displease the court besides. (You know there is some kind of connection.) But if you marry the old count you will make his last days happy, and as widow of the Grand … the prince would no longer be making a mésalliance by marrying you,” and Bilíbin smoothed out his forehead.
“That’s a true friend!” said Elèn beaming, and again touching Bilíbin’s sleeve. “But I love them, you know, and don’t want to distress either of them. I would give my life for the happiness of them both.”
Bilíbin shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that not even he could help in that difficulty.
“ Une maîtresse-femme! That’s what is called putting things squarely. She would like to be married to all three at the same time,” thought he.
“But tell me, how will your husband look at the matter?” Bilíbin asked, his reputation being so well established that he did not fear to ask so naive a question. “Will he agree?”
“Oh, he loves me so!” said Elèn, who for some reason imagined that Pierre too loved her. “He will do anything for me.”
Bilíbin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty.