Sappho smoking a cigarette went off into the garden with the two
young men. Betsy and Stremov remained at the tea-table.
"What, bored!" said Betsy. "Sappho says they did enjoy
themselves tremendously at your house last night."
"Ah, how dreary it all was!" said Liza Merkalova. "We all drove
back to my place after the races. And always the same people,
always the same. Always the same thing. We lounged about on
sofas all the evening. What is there to enjoy in that? No; do
tell me how you manage never to be bored?" she said, addressing
Anna again. "One has but to look at you and one sees, here's a
woman who may be happy or unhappy, but isn't bored. Tell me how
you do it?"
"I do nothing," answered Anna, blushing at these searching
questions.
"That's the best way," Stremov put in. Stremov was a man of
fifty, partly gray, but still vigorous-looking, very ugly, but
with a characteristic and intelligent face. Liza Merkalova was
his wife's niece, and he spent all his leisure hours with her.
On meeting Anna Karenina, as he was Alexey Alexandrovitch's enemy
in the government, he tried, like a shrewd man and a man of the
world, to be particularly cordial with her, the wife of his
enemy.
"'Nothing,'" he put in with a subtle smile, "that's the very best
way. I told you long ago," he said, turning to Liza Merkalova,
"that if you don't want to be bored, you mustn't think you're
going to be bored. It's just as you mustn't be afraid of not
being able to fall asleep, if you're afraid of sleeplessness.
That's just what Anna Arkadyevna has just said."
"I should be very glad if I had said it, for it's not only
clever but true," said Anna, smiling.
"No, do tell me why it is one can't go to sleep, and one can't
help being bored?"
"To sleep well one ought to work, and to enjoy oneself one ought
to work too."
"What am I to work for when my work is no use to anybody? And I
can't and won't knowingly make a pretense about it."
"You're incorrigible," said Stremov, not looking at her, and he
spoke again to Anna. As he rarely met Anna, he could say nothing
but commonplaces to her, but he said those commonplaces as to
when she was returning to Petersburg, and how fond Countess Lidia
Ivanovna was of her, with an expression which suggested that he
longed with his whole soul to please her and show his regard for
her and even more than that.