"What's the matter? You are ill?" he said to her in French,

going up to her. He would have run to her, but remembering that

there might be spectators, he looked round towards the balcony

door, and reddened a little, as he always reddened, feeling that

he had to be afraid and be on his guard.

"No, I'm quite well," she said, getting up and pressing his

outstretched hand tightly. "I did not expect...thee."

"Mercy! what cold hands!" he said.

"You startled me," she said. "I'm alone, and expecting

Seryozha; he's out for a walk; they'll come in from this side."

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But, in spite of her efforts to be calm, her lips were quivering.

"Forgive me for coming, but I couldn't pass the day without

seeing you," he went on, speaking French, as he always did to

avoid using the stiff Russian plural form, so impossibly frigid

between them, and the dangerously intimate singular.

"Forgive you? I'm so glad!"

"But you're ill or worried," he went on, not letting go her hands

and bending over her. "What were you thinking of?"

"Always the same thing," she said, with a smile.

She spoke the truth. If ever at any moment she had been asked

what she was thinking of, she could have answered truly: of the

same thing, of her happiness and her unhappiness. She was

thinking, just when he came upon her, of this: why was it, she

wondered, that to others, to Betsy (she knew of her secret

connection with Tushkevitch) it was all easy, while to her it was

such torture? Today this thought gained special poignancy from

certain other considerations. She asked him about the races. He

answered her questions, and, seeing that she was agitated, trying

to calm her, he began telling her in the simplest tone the

details of his preparations for the races.

"Tell him or not tell him?" she thought, looking into his quiet,

affectionate eyes. "He is so happy, so absorbed in his races

that he won't understand as he ought, he won't understand all the

gravity of this fact to us."

"But you haven't told me what you were thinking of when I came

in," he said, interrupting his narrative; "please tell me!"

She did not answer, and, bending her head a little, she looked

inquiringly at him from under her brows, her eyes shining under

their long lashes. Her hand shook as it played with a leaf she

had picked. He saw it, and his face expressed that utter

subjection, that slavish devotion, which had done so much to win

her.




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