"But who is a cheat?" said Varenka reproachfully. "You speak as

if..."

But Kitty was in one of her gusts of fury, and she would not let

her finish.

"I don't talk about you, not about you at all. You're

perfection. Yes, yes, I know you're all perfection; but what am

I to do if I'm bad? This would never have been if I weren't bad.

So let me be what I am. I won't be a sham. What have I to do

with Anna Pavlovna? Let them go their way, and me go mine. I

can't be different.... And yet it's not that, it's not that."

Advertisement..

"What is not that?" asked Varenka in bewilderment.

"Everything. I can't act except from the heart, and you act

from principle. I liked you simply, but you most likely only

wanted to save me, to improve me."

"You are unjust," said Varenka.

"But I'm not speaking of other people, I'm speaking of myself."

"Kitty," they heard her mother's voice, "come here, show papa

your necklace."

Kitty, with a haughty air, without making peace with her friend,

took the necklace in a little box from the table and went to her

mother.

"What's the matter? Why are you so red?" her mother and father

said to her with one voice.

"Nothing," she answered. "I'll be back directly," and she ran

back.

"She's still here," she thought. "What am I to say to her? Oh,

dear! what have I done, what have I said? Why was I rude to

her? What am I to do? What am I to say to her?" thought Kitty,

and she stopped in the doorway.

Varenka in her hat and with the parasol in her hands was sitting

at the table examining the spring which Kitty had broken. She

lifted her head.

"Varenka, forgive me, do forgive me," whispered Kitty, going up

to her. "I don't remember what I said. I..."

"I really didn't mean to hurt you," said Varenka, smiling.

Peace was made. But with her father's coming all the world in

which she had been living was transformed for Kitty. She did not

give up everything she had learned, but she became aware that she

had deceived herself in supposing she could be what she wanted to

be. Her eyes were, it seemed, opened; she felt all the

difficulty of maintaining herself without hypocrisy and

self-conceit on the pinnacle to which she had wished to mount.

Moreover, she became aware of all the dreariness of the world of

sorrow, of sick and dying people, in which she had been living.

The efforts she had made to like it seemed to her intolerable,

and she felt a longing to get back quickly into the fresh air, to

Russia, to Ergushovo, where, as she knew from letters, her sister

Dolly had already gone with her children.




Most Popular