When Darya Alexandrovna lay in bed that night, as soon as she

closed her eyes, she saw Vassenka Veslovsky flying about the

croquet ground.

During the game Darya Alexandrovna was not enjoying herself. She

did not like the light tone of raillery that was kept up all the

time between Vassenka Veslovsky and Anna, and the unnaturalness

altogether of grown-up people, all alone without children,

playing at a child's game. But to avoid breaking up the party

and to get through the time somehow, after a rest she joined the

game again, and pretended to be enjoying it. All that day it

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seemed to her as though she were acting in a theater with actors

cleverer than she, and that her bad acting was spoiling the whole

performance. She had come with the intention of staying two

days, if all went well. But in the evening, during the game, she

made up her mind that she would go home next day. The maternal

cares and worries, which she had so hated on the way, now, after

a day spent without them, struck her in quite another light, and

tempted her back to them.

When, after evening tea and a row by night in the boat, Darya

Alexandrovna went alone to her room, took off her dress, and

began arranging her thin hair for the night, she had a great

sense of relief.

It was positively disagreeable to her to think that Anna was

coming to see her immediately. She longed to be alone with her

own thoughts.




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