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cerned. What exaggeration could there be in the practice of a doctrine
wherein one was bidden to turn the other cheek when one was smit-
ten, and give one’s cloak if one’s coat were taken? But the princess
disliked this exaggeration, and disliked even more the fact that she felt
her daughter did not care to show her all her heart. Kitty did in fact
conceal her new views and feelings from her mother. She concealed
them not because she did not respect or did not love her mother, but
simply because she was her mother. She would have revealed them to
anyone sooner than to her mother.
“How is it Anna Pavlovna’s not been to see us for so long?” the
princess said one day of Madame Petrova. “I’ve asked her, but she
seems put out about something.”
“No, I’ve not noticed it, maman,” said Kitty, flushing hotly.
“Is it long since you went to see them?”
“We’re meaning to make an expedition to the mountains tomor-
row,” answered Kitty,
“Well, you can go,” answered the princess, gazing at her daughter’s
embarrassed face and trying to guess the cause of her embarrassment.
That day Varenka came to dinner and told them that Anna Pavlovna
had changed her mind and given up the expedition for the morrow.
And the princess noticed again that Kitty reddened.
“Kitty, haven’t you had some misunderstanding with the Petrovs?”
said the princess, when they were left alone. “Why has she given up
sending the children and coming to see us?”
Kitty answered that nothing had happened between them, and
that she could not tell why Anna Pavlovna seemed displeased with
her. Kitty answered perfectly truly. She did not know the reason Anna
Pavlovna had changed to her, but she guessed it. She guessed at
something which she could not tell her mother, which she did not put
into words to herself. It was one of those things which one knows but
which one can never speak of even to oneself so terrible and shameful
would it be to be mistaken.
Again and again she went over in her memory all her relations with
the family. She remembered the simple delight expressed on the round,
good-humored face of Anna Pavlovna at their meetings; she remem-
bered their secret confabulations about the invalid, their plots to draw
him away from the work which was forbidden him, and to get him out-
of-doors; the devotion of the youngest boy, who used to call her “my
Kitty,” and would not go to bed without her. How nice it all was! Then
she recalled the thin, terribly thin figure of Petrov, with his long neck, in
his brown coat, his scant, curly hair, his questioning blue eyes that were
so terrible to Kitty at first, and his painful attempts to seem hearty and
lively in her presence. She recalled the efforts she had made at first to
overcome the repugnance she felt for him, as for all consumptive people,
and the pains it had cost her to think of things to say to him. She
recalled the timid, softened look with which he gazed at her, and the
strange feeling of compassion and awkwardness, and later of a sense of
her own goodness, which she had felt at it. How nice it all was! But all
that was at first. Now, a few days ago, everything was suddenly spoiled.
Anna Pavlovna had met Kitty with affected cordiality, and had kept
continual watch on her and on her husband.
Could that touching pleasure he showed when she came near be
the cause of Anna Pavlovna’s coolness?
“Yes,” she mused, “there was something unnatural about Anna
Pavlovna, and utterly unlike her good nature, when she said angrily
the day before yesterday: ‘There, he will keep waiting for you; he
wouldn’t drink his coffee without you, though he’s grown so dreadfully
weak.’ “