Only the Moskva River was black. And above it, on all sides, swirling up into the sky or hanging motionless in the air, fluttered a white veil. All at once the muted sound of bells trembled within these snowy and icy depths. It was not the Kremlin clock but a thin and distant chime. It rang out from the belfry of a little church lost in all this silent snow, somewhere near Taganka Square. "We each have our cross…" Olya remembered. And she smiled. "And each our first snow…"
She shut the window, drew close to the bed and looked at the Frenchman as he slept. "Without his clothes he looks like a boy," she told herself. "I must have chilled him opening that window." Cautiously she drew the covers over him and slipped in beside him. Slowly, a little stiffly she stretched out on her back.
Abruptly everything began to spin before her eyes – snatches of conversation, the sensation on her lips of all the smiling done that day, the people, the faces… the faces… Just before she drifted off, in the manner of a half-whispered childish prayer, a thought brushed against her: "It would be good if he paid me in hard currency… I could buy back my father's Star…"